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HARRY JOHNSON

Harry Johnson (1923–1977) was such a striking figure in economics that Nobel
Laureate James Tobin designated the third quarter of the twentieth century
as the age of Johnson. Johnson played a leading role in the development and
extension of the Heckscher–Ohlin model of international trade, wrote funda-
mental articles on the balance of payments, and later developed the monetary
approach to the balance of payments. Within monetary economics, he was also
a seminal figure who, in a series of surveys, identified and explained the links
between the ideas of the major postwar innovators. His discussion of the issues
that would benefit from further work set the profession’s agenda for a genera-
tion. Johnson was the consummate editor of his generation; he was managing
editor of the Review of Economic Studies and editor of the Journal of Political
Economy (twice), the Manchester School, and Economica. Trained at Toronto,
Cambridge, and Harvard, he taught at Cambridge (1949–1956), Manchester
(1956–1959), Chicago (1959–1977), the London School of Economics (1966–
1974), and Geneva (1976–1977). This book chronicles his intellectual develop-
ment and his contributions to economics, economic education, and, particularly
in Canada and Britain, the discussion of economic policy.

D. E. Moggridge has been Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto

since 1974. He previously served as a Research Fellow and Fellow of Clare College,
Cambridge, from 1967 to 1975. Professor Moggridge was invited by the Royal
Economics Society in 1969 to be an editor of The Collected Writings of John
Maynard Keynes, thirty volumes of which appeared between 1970 and 1989.
His coeditor of the volumes was Elizabeth Johnson, wife of the subject of this
book. Professor Moggridge is also the author of British Monetary Policy, 1924–
1931 (Cambridge University Press, 1992); Keynes (1993); and Maynard Keynes:
An Economist’s Biography (1992). He also coedited with Susan Howson The
Wartime Diaries of Lionel Robbins and James Meade, 1943–45 (1990) and The
Cabinet Office Diary of James Meade, 1944–46 (1990). Professor Moggridge
served as president of the History of Economics Society in 1988–1989 and has
also served as review editor of History of Political Economy since 1998.

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historical perspectives on modern economics

General Editor: Craufurd D. Goodwin, Duke University

This series contains original works that challenge and enlighten historians of economics.
For the profession as a whole, it promotes better understanding of the origin and content
of modern economics.

Other Books in the Series

William J. Barber, Designs within Disorder: Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Economists,
and the Shaping of American Economic Policy, 1933–1945
William J. Barber, From New Era to New Deal: Herbert Hoover, the Economists, and
American Economic Policy, 1921–1933
Timothy Davis, Ricardo’s Macroeconomics: Money, Trade Cycles, and Growth
Jerry Evensky, Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy: A Historical and Contemporary Per-
spective on Markets, Law, Ethics, and Culture
M. June Flanders, International Monetary Economics, 1870–1960: Between the Clas-
sical and the New Classical
J. Daniel Hammond, Theory and Measurement: Causality Issues in Milton Friedman’s
Monetary Economics
Lars Jonung (ed.), The Stockholm School of Economics Revisited
Kyn Kim, Equilibrium Business Cycle Theory in Historical Perspective
Gerald M. Koot, English Historical Economics, 1870–1926: The Rise of Economic
History and Mercantilism
David Laidler, Fabricating the Keynesian Revolution: Studies of the Inter-War Litera-
ture on Money, the Cycle, and Unemployment
Odd Langholm, The Legacy of Scholasticism in Economic Thought: Antecedents of
Choice and Power
Harro Maas, William Stanley Jevons and the Making of Modern Economics
Philip Mirowski, More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as
Nature’s Economics
Philip Mirowski (ed.), Nature Images in Economic Thought: “Markets Read in Tooth
and Claw”
Mary S. Morgan, The History of Econometric Ideas
Takashi Negishi, Economic Theories in a Non-Walrasian Tradition
Heath Pearson, Origins of Law and Economics: The Economists’ New Science of Law,
1830–1930
Malcolm Rutherford, Institutions in Economics: The Old and the New Institutionalism
Esther-Mirjam Sent, The Evolving Rationality of Rational Expectations: An Assessment
of Thomas Sargent’s Achievements
Yuichi Shionoya, Schumpeter and the Idea of Social Science
Juan Gabriel Valdes, Pinochet’s Economists: The Chicago School of Economics in Chile
Karen I. Vaughn, Austrian Economics in America: The Migration of a Tradition
E. Roy Weintraub, Stabilizing Dynamics: Constructing Economic Knowledge

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Harry Johnson
A Life in Economics

D. E. MOGGRIDGE
University of Toronto

v
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521874823

© Donald E. Moggridge 2008

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2008

ISBN-13 978-0-511-39828-5 eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13 978-0-521-87482-3 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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Contents

Photographs and Drawings page ix

Introduction 1
1 Toronto 12
2 Antigonish 39
3 England 55
4 North American Postgraduate 73
5 Cambridge Don 93
6 Cambridge Economist 126
7 Manchester 161
8 Chicago 193
9 Canada, Economic Nationalism, and Opulence,
1957–1966 213
10 Chicago: Money, Trade, and Development 242
11 LSE 276
12 Professional Life – Largely British 307
13 Money and Inflation 333
14 The International Monetary System 360
15 Harry’s “Wicksell Period” 378

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viii Contents

16 Stroke and After 393

17 Conclusion 413

Sources 433
Index 459
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Photographs and Drawings

1 Harry’s parents at Spruce Ridges – New Year’s 1946

2 Harry Johnson senior at Mitch Hepburn’s birthday party at
Hepburn’s farm in Elgin County – 12 August 1938
3 Harry at St. George’s School – 1926
4 Harry with the UTS 100-lb rugby team – 1936
5 Harry in 1944
6 Harry, Karen, Liz, and Ragnar – Cheadle, 1958
7 Flyer for Pocket Pieces – Manchester, 1959
8 Harry at LSE – late 1960s
9 Harry and Liz with Zvi Griliches and his wife – late 1972
10 The Octograph – 1973
11 Harry carving at the Konstanz Seminar – June 1973
12 Harry in London – January 1976
13 Harry in Tokyo – October 1976

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1. Harry’s parents at Spruce Ridges – New Year’s 1946 (Elizabeth Simpson)

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2. Harry Johnson senior at Mitch Hepburn’s birthday party at Hepburn’s farm in Elgin
County – 12 August 1938 (Harry senior is second from the left in the back row; in the
middle of the second row are Eve Hepburn, Peter Hepburn, Mitch and Patsy Hepburn;
second from the right in the front row is Maurice Duplesis, the premier of Quebec)
(Elizabeth Simpson)

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3. Harry at St. George’s School – 1926 (Harry is on the left at the back) (Blatz Papers)

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4. Harry with the UTS 100-lb rugby team – 1936 (Harry is third from the right in the
front row; Harry Parkinson is second from the left in the back row) (Elizabeth Simpson)

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5. Harry in 1944 (Elizabeth Simpson)

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6. Harry, Karen, Liz, and Ragnar – Cheadle 1958 (Elizabeth Simpson)

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7. Flyer for Pocket Pieces – Manchester, 1959 (Elizabeth Simpson)

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8. Harry at LSE – late 1960s (Elizabeth Simpson)

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9. Harry and Liz with Zvi Griliches and his wife – late 1972 (Elizabeth Simpson)

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10. The Octograph – 1973 (Roger Vaughan)

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11. Harry carving at the Konstanz Seminar – June 1973 (Elizabeth Simpson)

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12. Harry in London – January 1976 (Elizabeth Simpson)

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13. Harry in Tokyo – October 1976 (Elizabeth Simpson)

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HARRY JOHNSON

xxiii
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Two peculiarities of the Dutch organisation ought to be explained.
The consistory or kirk-session is the court which rules the individual
congregation in Holland as in all other Presbyterian lands; but in the
Dutch Church all Church members inhabiting a city are regarded as
one congregation; the ministers are the pastors of the city,
preaching in turn in all its buildings set apart for public worship, and
the people are not considered to be specially attached to any one of
the buildings, nor to belong to the flock of any one of the ministers;
and therefore there is one consistory for the whole city. This
peculiarity was also seen in the early centuries. Then it must be
noticed that, owing to the political organisation of the United
Provinces, it was difficult to arrange for a National Synod. The civil
constitution was a federation of States, in many respects
independent of each other, who were bound to protect each other in
war, to maintain a common army, and to contribute to a common
military treasury. When William of Orange was elected Stadtholder
for life, one of the laws which bound him was that he should not
acknowledge any ecclesiastical assembly which had not the approval
of the civil authorities of the province in which it proposed to meet.
This implied that each province was entitled to regulate its own
ecclesiastical affairs. There could be no meeting of a National Synod
unless all the United Provinces gave their approval. Hence the
tendency was to prevent corporate and united action.
According to the articles of Emden, and the revised and enlarged
edition approved at Dordrecht in 1572, it was agreed that office-
bearers in the Church were to sign the Confession of Faith. This
creed had been prepared by Guido de Brès (born at Mons in 1540)
in 1561, and had been revised by several of his friends. It was based
on the Confession of the French Church, and was originally written in
French. It was approved by a series of Synods, and was translated
into Dutch, German, and Latin. It is known as the Belgic Confession.
Its original title was, A Confession of Faith, generally and
unanimously maintained by Believers dispersed throughout the Low
Countries who desire to live according to the purity of the Holy
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.[271] The Church also adopted the
Heidelberg Catechism[272] for the instruction of the young.
The long fight against Spain and the Inquisition had stimulated the
energies of the Church and the people of the Netherlands, and their
Universities and theological schools soon rivalled older seats of
learning. The University of Leyden, a thank-offering for the
wonderful deliverance of the town, was founded in 1575; Franecker,
ten years later, in 1585; and there followed in rapid succession the
Universities of Gronningen (1612), Utrecht (1636), and Harderwyk
(1648). Dutch theologians and lawyers became famous during the
seventeenth century for their learning and acumen.
 CHAPTER VI.
THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.[273]
If civilisation means the art of living together in peace, Scotland was
almost four hundred years behind the rest of Western Europe in the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
The history of her kings is a tale of assassinations, long minorities,
regencies scrambled and fought for by unscrupulous barons; and
kingly authority, which had been growing in other countries, was on
the verge of extinction in Scotland. Her Parliament or Estates of the
Realm was a mere feudal assembly, with more than the usual
uncertainty regarding who were entitled to be present; while its
peculiar management by a Committee of the Estates made it a facile
instrument in the hands of the faction who were for the moment in
power, and robbed it of any stable influence on the country as a
whole. The Church, wealthy so far as acreage was concerned, had
become secularised to an extent unknown elsewhere, and its
benefices served to provide for the younger sons of the great feudal
families in a manner which recalls the days of Charles the Hammer.
[274]

Yet the country had been prepared for the Reformation by the
education of the people, especially of the middle class, by constant
intercourse between Scotland and France and the Low Countries,
and by the sympathy which Scottish students had felt for the earlier
movements towards Church reform in England and Bohemia; while
the wealth and immorality of the Romish clergy, the poverty of the
nobility and landed gentry, and the changing political situation,
combined to give an impetus to the efforts of those who longed for a
Reformation.
More than one historian has remarked that the state of education in
Scotland had always been considerably in advance of what might
have been expected from its backward civilisation. This has been
usually traced to the enduring influence of the old Celtic Church—a
Church which had maintained its hold on the country for more than
seven centuries, and which had always looked upon the education of
the people as a religious duty. Old Celtic ecclesiastical rules declared
that it was as important to teach boys and girls to read, as to
dispense the sacraments, and to take part in soul-friendship
(confession). The Celtic monastery had always been an educational
centre; and when Charles the Great established the High Schools
which grew to be the older Universities of northern Europe, the
Celtic monasteries furnished many of the teachers. The very
complete educational system of the old Church had been taken over
into the Roman Church which supplanted it, under Queen Margaret
and her sons. Hence it was that the Cathedral and Monastery
Schools produced a number of scholars who were eager to enrich
their stores of learning beyond what the mother-country could give
them, and the Scotch wandering student was well known during the
Middle Ages on the Continent of Europe. One Scottish bishop
founded a Scots College in Paris for his countrymen; other bishops
obtained from English kings safe-conducts for their students to
reside at Oxford and Cambridge.
This scholastic intercourse brought Scotland in touch with the
intellectual movements in Europe. Scottish students at Paris listened
to the lectures of Peter Dubois and William of Ockham when they
taught the theories contained in the Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of
Padua, who had expounded that the Church is not the hierarchy, but
the Christian people, and had denied both the temporal and spiritual
supremacy of the Pope. The Rotuli Scotiæ,[275] or collection of safe-
conducts issued by English monarchs to inhabitants of the northern
kingdom, show that a continuous stream of Scottish students went
to the English Universities from 1357 to 1389. During the earlier
years of this period—that is, up to 1364—the safe-conducts applied
for and granted entitled the bearers to go to Oxford or Cambridge or
any other place of learning in England; but from 1364 to 1379
Oxford seems to have been the only University frequented. During
one of these years (1365) safe-conducts were given to no fewer
than eighty-one Scottish students to study in Oxford. The period was
that during which the influence of Wiclif was most powerful, when
Oxford seethed with Lollardy; and the teachings of the great
Reformer were thus brought into Scotland.
Lollardy seems to have made great progress. In 1405, Robert, Duke
of Albany, was made Governor of Scotland, and Andrew Wyntoun in
his Metrical Chronicle praises him for his fidelity to the Church:

“He wes a constant Catholike,

All Lollard he hatyt and heretike.”[276]

From this time down to the very dawn of the Reformation we find
references to Lollardy in contemporary writers and in Acts of the
Scots Parliament; and all the earlier histories of the Reformation
movement in Scotland relate the story of the Lollards of Kyle and
their interview with King James IV.[277]
The presence of Lollard opinions in Scotland must have attracted the
attention of the leaders of the Hussites in Bohemia. In 1433 (July
23rd), Paul Craw or Crawar was seized, tried before the Inquisitorial
court, condemned, and burnt as a heretic. He had brought letters
from the Hussites of Prag, and acknowledged that he had been sent
to interest the Scots in the Hussite movement—one of the many
emissaries who were despatched in 1431 and 1432 by Procopius and
John Rokycana into all European lands. He was found by the
Inquisitor to be a man in sacris literis et in allegatione Bibliæ
promptus et exercitatus. Knox tells us that he was condemned for
denying transubstantiation, auricular confession to the priests, and
prayers to saints departed. We learn also from Knox that at his
burning the executioner put a ball of brass in his mouth that the
people might not hear his defence. His execution did not arrest the
progress of Lollardy. The earlier poems of Sir David Lindsay contain
Lollard opinions. By the time that these were published (1529-1530),
Lutheran writings had found their way into Scotland, and may have
influenced the writer; but the sentiments in the Testament and
Complaynt of the Papyngo are more Lollard than Lutheran.
The Romish Church in Scotland was comparatively wealthy, and the
rude Scottish nobles managed to place their younger sons in many a
fat living, with the result that the manners of the clergy did little
honour to their sacred calling. Satirists began to point the moral.
John Row says:

“As for the more particulare means whereby many in Scotland

got some knowledge of God’s trueth, in the time of great
darkness, there were some books sett out, such as Sir David
Lindesay his poesie upon the Four Monarchies, wherein many
other treatises are conteined, opening up the abuses among the
Clergie at that tyme; Wedderburn’s Psalms and Godlie Ballads,
changing many of the old Popish songs unto Godlie purposes; a
Complaint given in by the halt, blinde and poore of England,
aganis the prelats, preists, friers, and others such kirkmen, who
prodigallie wasted all the tithes and kirk liveings upon their
unlawfull pleasures, so that they could get no sustentation nor
releef as God had ordained. This was printed and came into
Scotland. There were also some theatricall playes, comedies,
and other notable histories acted in publict; for Sir David
Lindesay his Satyre was acted in the Amphitheater of St.
Johnestoun (Perth), before King James the V., and a great part
of the nobilitie and gentrie, fra morn to even, whilk made the
people sensible of the darknes wherein they lay, of the
wickednes of their kirkmen, and did let them see how God’s Kirk
should have bene otherwayes guyded nor it was; all of whilk did
much good for that tyme.”[278]

It may be doubted, however, whether the Scottish people felt the

real sting in such satires until they began to be taught by preachers
who had been to Wittenberg, or who had studied the writings of
Luther and other Reformers, or who had learned from private
perusal of the Scriptures what it was to be in earnest about pardon
of sin and salvation of soul.
Some of the towns on the East Coast were centres of trade with the
Continent, and Leith had once been an obscure member of the great
Hanseatic League. Lutheran and other tracts were smuggled into
Scotland from Campvere by way of Leith, Dundee, and Montrose.
The authorities were on the alert, and tried to put an end to the
practice. In 1525, Parliament forbade strangers bringing Lutheran
books into Scotland on pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of their
goods and ships;[279] and in the same year the Government were
informed that “sundry strangers and others within the diocese of
Aberdeen were possessed of Luther’s books, and favoured his errors
and false opinions.” Two years later (1527), the Act was made to
include those who assisted in spreading Lutheran views. An agent of
Wolsey informed the Cardinal that Scottish merchants were
purchasing copies of Tyndale’s New Testament in the Low Countries
and sending them to Scotland.[280] The efforts of the Government
do not seem to have been very successful. Another Act of Parliament
in 1535 declared that none but the clergy were to be allowed to
purchase heretical books; all others possessing such were required
to give them up within forty days.[281] This legislation clearly shows
the spread of Reformed writings among the people of Scotland.
The first Scottish martyr was Patrick Hamilton, a younger son of Sir
Patrick Hamilton of Kincavel and Stanehouse. He had studied at Paris
and Louvain. As he took his degree of M.A. in Paris in 1520, he had
been there when the writings of Luther were being studied by all
learned men, including the theological students of the Sorbonne (the
theological faculty).[282] Hamilton must have been impressed by the
principles of the German Reformer, and have made no secret of his
views when he returned to Scotland; for in the beginning of 1527 he
was a suspected heretic, and was ordered to be summoned and
accused as such. He fled from Scotland, went to Wittenberg, was at
the opening of Philip of Hesse’s new Evangelical University of
Marburg (May 30th, 1527), and drafted the theses for the first
academic Disputation.[283] He felt constrained, however, to return to
his native land to testify against the corruptions of the Roman
Church, and was preaching in Scotland in the end of autumn 1527.
The success attending his ministry excited the fears of the prelates.
He was invited, or rather enticed, to St. Andrews; allowed for nearly
a month to preach and dispute in the University; and was then
arrested and tried in the cathedral. The trial took place in the
forenoon, and at mid-day he was hurried to the stake (Feb. 27th,
1528). The fire by carelessness rather than with intention was slow,
and death came only after lingering hours of agony.
If the ecclesiastical authorities thought to stamp out the new faith by
this martyrdom, they were soon to discover their mistake. Alexander
Alane (Alesius), who had undertaken to convince Patrick Hamilton of
his errors, had been himself converted. He was arrested and
imprisoned, but escaped to the Continent. The following years
witnessed a succession of martyrs—Henry Forrest (1533), David
Stratton and Norman Gourlay (1534), Duncan Simpson, Forrester,
Keillor, Beverage, Forret, Russell, and Kennedy (1539). The
celebrated George Buchanan was imprisoned, but managed to
escape.[284] The Scots Parliament and Privy Council assisted the
Churchmen to extirpate the new faith in a series of enactments
which themselves bear witness to its spread. In 1540, in a series of
Acts (March 14th) it was declared that the Virgin Mary was “to be
reverently worshipped, and prayers made to her” for the King’s
prosperity, for peace with all Christian princes, for the triumph of the
“Faith Catholic,” and that the people “may remain in the faith and
conform to the statutes of Holy Kirk.” Prayers were also ordered to
be made to the saints. It was forbidden to argue against, or impugn,
the papal authority under pain of death and confiscation of “goods
movable and immovable.” No one is to “cast down or otherwise treat
irreverently or in any ways dishonour” the images of saints
canonised by the Church. Heretics who have seen the error of their
ways are not to discuss with others any matters touching “our holy
faith.” No one suspected of heresy, even if he has recanted, is to be
eligible to hold any office, nor to be admitted to the King’s Council.
All who assist heretics are threatened with severe punishment. In
1543, notwithstanding all this legislation, the Lord Governor (the Earl
of Arran) had to confess that heretics increase rapidly, and spread
opinions contrary to the Church.[285] The terms of some of these
enactments show that the new faith had been making converts
among the nobility; and they also indicate the chief points of attack
on the Roman Church in Scotland.
In 1542 (Dec. 14th), James V. died, leaving an infant daughter, Mary
(b. Dec. 8th), who became the Queen of Scots when barely a week
old. Thus Scotland was again harassed with an infant sovereign; and
there was the usual scramble for the Regency, which this time
involved questions of national policy as well as personal
aggrandisement.
It was the settled policy of the Tudor kings to detach Scotland from
the old French alliance, and secure it for England. The marriage of
Margaret Tudor to James iv. shows what means they thought to
employ, and but for Margaret’s quarrel with the Earl of Angus, her
second husband, another wedding might have bound the nations
firmly together. The French marriages of James V., first with
Madeleine, daughter of Francis I. (1537), and on her premature
death with Mary of Guise (1538), showed the recoil of Scotland from
the English alliance. James’ death gave Henry VIII. an opportunity to
renew his father’s schemes, and his idea was to betroth his boy
Edward to the baby Mary, and get the “little Queen” brought to
England for education. Many Scotsmen thought the proposal a good
one for their country, and perhaps more were induced to think so by
the money which Henry lavished upon them to secure their support
They made the English party in Scotland. The policy of English
alliance as against French alliance was complicated by the question
of religion. Whatever may be thought of the character of the English
Reformation at this date, Henry VIII. had broken thoroughly with the
Papacy, and union with England would have dragged Scotland to
revolt against the mediæval Church. The leader of the French and
Romanist party in Scotland was David Beaton, certainly the ablest
and perhaps the most unscrupulous man there. He had been made
Archbishop of St. Andrews, coadjutor to his aged uncle, in 1538. In
the same month, Pope Paul iii., who needed a Churchman of the
highest rank to publish his Bull against Henry VIII. in a place as near
England as was possible to find, had sent him a Cardinal’s Hat. The
Cardinal, Beaton, stood in Scotland for France and Rome against
England and the Reformation. The struggle for the Regency in
Scotland in 1542 carried with it an international and a religious
policy. The clouds heralding the storm which was to destroy Mary,
gathered round the cradle of the baby Queen.
At first the English faction prevailed. The claims of the Queen Mother
were scarcely considered. Beaton produced a will, said to have been
fraudulently obtained from the dying King, appointing him and
several of the leading nobles of Scotland, Governors of the kingdom.
This arrangement was soon set aside, the Earl of Arran was
appointed Governor (Jan. 3rd, 1543), and Beaton was confined in
Blackness Castle.
The Governor selected John Rough for his chaplain and Thomas
Williams for his preacher, both ardent Reformers. The Acts of the
previous reign against heresy were modified to the extent that men
suspect of heresy might enjoy office, and heretics were accorded
more merciful treatment. Moreover, an Act of Parliament (March
15th, 1543) permitted the possession and reading of a good and
true translation of the Old and New Testaments. But the masterful
policy of Henry VIII. and the weakness of the Governor brought
about a change. Beaton was released from Blackness and restored
to his own Castle of St. Andrews; the Governor dismissed his
Reformed preachers; the Privy Council (June 2nd, 1543) forbade on
pain of death and confiscation of goods all criticism of the mediæval
doctrine of the Sacraments, and forbade the possession of heretical
books. In September, Arran and Beaton were reconciled; in
December, the Parliament annulled the treaties with England
consenting to a marriage between Edward and Mary, and the ancient
league with France was renewed. This was followed by the revival of
persecution, and almost all that had been gained was lost. Henry’s
ruthless devastation of the Borders did not mend matters. The more
enlightened policy of Lord Protector Somerset could not allay the
suspicions of the Scottish nation. Their “little Queen” was sent to
France to be educated by the Guises, “to the end that in hir youth
she should drynk of that lycour, that should remane with hir all hir
lyfetyme, for a plague to this realme, and for hir finall
destructioun.”[286]
But if the Reformation movement was losing ground as a national
policy, it was gaining strength as a spiritual quickening in the hearts
of the people. George Wishart, one of the Wisharts of Pittarrow, who
had fled from persecution in 1538 and had wandered in England,
Germany, and Switzerland, returned to his native country about
1543, consumed with the desire to bear witness for the Gospel. He
preached in Montrose, and Dundee during a visitation of the plague,
and Ayrshire. Beaton’s party were anxious to secure him, and after a
preaching tour in the Lothians he was seized in Ormiston House and
handed over to the Earl of Bothwell, who, breaking pledges he had
made, delivered him to the Cardinal; he lodged him in the dungeon
at St. Andrews (end of Jan. 1546), and had him tried in the
cathedral, when he was condemned to the stake (March 1st, 1546).
Wishart was Knox’s forerunner, and during this tour in the Lothians,
Knox had been his constant companion. The Romanist party had
tried to assassinate the bold preacher, and Knox carried a two-
handed sword ready to cut down anyone who attempted to strike at
the missionary while he was speaking. All the tenderness which lay
beneath the sternness of Knox’s character appears in the account he
gives of Wishart in his History. And to Wishart, Knox was the
beloved disciple. When he foresaw that the end was near, he refused
to allow Knox to share his danger.[287]
Assassination was a not infrequent way of getting rid of a political
opponent in the sixteenth century, and Beaton’s death had long been
planned, not without secret promptings from England. Three months
after Wishart’s martyrdom (May 29th, 1546), Norman Lesley and
Kirkcaldy of Grange at the head of a small band of men broke into
the Castle of St. Andrews and slew the Cardinal. They held the
stronghold, and the castle became a place of refuge for men whose
lives were threatened by the Government, and who sympathised
with the English alliance. The Government laid siege to the place but
were unable to take it, and their troops withdrew. John Rough, who
had been Arran’s Reformed chaplain, joined the company, and began
to preach to the people of St. Andrews. Knox, who had become a
marked man, and had thought of taking refuge in Germany, was
persuaded to enter the castle, and there, sorely against his will, he
was almost forced to stand forth as a preacher of the Word. His first
sermon placed him at once in the foremost rank of Scottish
Reformers, and men began to predict that he would share the fate
of Wishart. “Master George Wishart spak never so plainelye, and yitt
he was brunt: evin so will he be.”[288]
Next to nothing is known about the early history of John Knox. He
came into the world at or near Haddington in the year 1515,[289] but
on what day or month remains hidden. He sprang from the
commons of Scotland, and his forebears were followers of the Earls
of Bothwell; he was a papal notary, and in priest’s orders in 1540; he
was tutor to the sons of the lairds of Ormiston and Longniddry in
1545; he accompanied Wishart in December and January 1545,
1546—these are the facts known about him before he was called to
stand forward as a preacher of the Reformation in Scotland. He was
then thirty-two—a silent, slow ripening man, with quite a talent for
keeping himself in the background.
Knox’s work in the castle and town of St. Andrews was interrupted
by the arrival of a French fleet (July 1547), which battered the walls
with artillery until the castle was compelled to surrender. He and all
the inmates were carried over to France. They had secured as terms
of surrender that their lives should be spared; that they should be
safely transported to France; and that if they could not accept the
terms there offered to them by the French King, they should be
allowed to depart to any country they might select for their sojourn,
save Scotland. It was not the custom, however, for French kings to
keep promises made to heretics, and Knox and his companions were
made galley-slaves. For nineteen months he had to endure this living
death, which for long drawn out torture can only be compared with
what the Christians of the earliest centuries had to suffer when they
were condemned to the mines. He had to sit chained with four or six
others to the rowing benches, which were set at right angles to the
side of the ship, without change of posture by day, and compelled to
sleep, still chained, under the benches by night; exposed to the
elements day and night alike; enduring the lash of the overseer, who
paced up and down the gangway which ran between the two lines of
benches; feeding on the insufficient meals of coarse biscuit and
porridge of oil and beans; chained along with the vilest malefactors.
The French Papists had invented this method of treating all who
differed from them in religious matters. It could scarcely make Knox
the more tolerant of French policy or of the French religion. He
seldom refers to this terrible experience. He dismisses it with:

“How long I continewed prisoneir, what torment I susteaned in

the galaies, and what war the sobbes of my harte, is now no
time to receat: This onlie I can nocht conceall, which mo than
one have hard me say, when the body was far absent from
Scotland, that my assured houp was, in oppin audience, to
preache in Sanctandrois befoir I depairted this lyeff.”[290]

The prisoners were released from the galleys through the

instrumentality of the English Government in the early months of
1549, and Knox reached England by the 7th of April. It was there
that he began his real work as a preacher of the Reformation. He
spent nearly five years as minister at Berwick, at Newcastle, and in
London. He was twice offered preferment—the vacant bishopric of
Rochester in 1552, and the vicarage of All Hallows in Bread St.,
London, in the beginning of 1553. He refused both, and was actually
summoned before the Privy Council to explain why he would not
accept preferment.[291] It is probable that he had something to do
with the production of The Book of Common Prayer and
Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies in
the Church of England, 1552, commonly called the Second Prayer-
Book of King Edward VI. The rubric explaining kneeling at the
partaking of the Holy Supper, or at least one sentence in it, is most
probably due to his remonstrances or suggestions.[292] The
accession of Mary Tudor to the throne closed his career in England;
but he stuck to his work long after his companion preachers had
abandoned it. He was in London, and had the courage to rebuke the
rejoicings of the crowd at her entry into the capital—a fearless,
outspoken man, who could always be depended on for doing what
no one else dared.
Knox got safely across the Channel, travelled through France by
ways unknown, and reached Geneva. He spent some time with
Calvin, then went on to Zurich to see Bullinger. He appears to have
been meditating deeply on the condition of Scotland and England,
and propounded a set of questions to these divines which show that
he was trying to formulate for himself the principles he afterwards
asserted on the rights of subjects to restrain tyrannical sovereigns.
[293] The years 1554-58, with the exception of a brief visit to
Scotland in the end of 1555, were spent on the Continent, but were
important for his future work in Scotland. They witnessed the
troubles in the Frankfurt congregation of English exiles, where
Knox’s broad-minded toleration and straightforward action stands in
noble contrast with the narrow-minded and crooked policy of his
opponents. They were the time of his peaceful and happy
ministrations among the refugees at Geneva. They made him
familiar with the leading Protestants of France and of Switzerland,
and taught him the inner political condition of the nations of Europe.
They explain Knox’s constant and accurate information in later years,
when he seemed to learn about the doings of continental statesmen
as early as Cecil, with all the resources of the English Foreign Office
behind him. Above all, they made him see that, humanly speaking,
the fate of the whole Reformation movement was bound up with an
alliance between a Protestant England and a Protestant Scotland.
Knox returned to Scotland for a brief visit of about ten months (Sept.
1555-July 1556). He exhorted those who visited him in his lodgings
in Edinburgh, and made preaching tours, dispensing the Lord’s
Supper according to the Reformed rite on several occasions. He
visited Dun, Calder House, Barr, Ayr, Ochiltree, and several other
places, and was welcomed in the houses of many of the nobility. He
left for Geneva in July, having found time to marry his first wife,
Marjory Bowes,—uxor suavissima, and “a wife whose like is not to
be found everywhere,”[294] Calvin calls her,—and having put some
additional force into the growing Protestantism of his native land. He
tells us that most part of the gentlemen of the Mearns “band thame
selfis, to the uttermost of thare poweris, to manteane the trew
preaching of the Evangell of Jesus Christ, as God should offer unto
thame preacheris and opportunitie”—whether by word of mouth or
in writing, is not certain.[295]
In 1557 (Dec. 3rd) the Protestants of Scotland laid the foundations
of a definite organisation. It took a form familiar enough in the civil
history of the country, where the turbulent character of the Scottish
barons and the weakness of the central authority led to constant
confederations to carry out with safety enterprises sometimes legal
and sometimes outside the law. The confederates promised to assist
each other in the work proposed, and to defend each other from the
consequences following. Such agreements were often drafted in
legal fashion by public notaries, and made binding by all forms of
legal security known. The Lords of the Congregation, as they came
to be called, followed a prevailing custom when they promised—

“Befoir the Majestie of God and His congregatioun, that we (be

His grace) shall with all diligence continually apply our hole
power, substance, and our verray lyves, to manteane, sett
fordward, and establish the most blessed word of God and His
Congregatioun; and shall laubour at our possibilitie to have
faythfull Ministeris purely and trewlie to minister Christis
Evangell and Sacramentes to His people.”[296]
This “Band subscrived by the Lords” was the first (if the promise
made by the gentlemen of the Mearns be excepted) of the many
Covenants famous in the history of the Church of Scotland
Reformed.[297] It was an old Scottish usage now impregnated with a
new spiritual meaning, and become a public promise to God, after
Old Testament fashion, to be faithful to His word and guidance.
This important act had immediate consequences. The confederated
Lords sent letters to Knox, then at Geneva, and to Calvin, urging the
return of the Scottish Reformer to his native land. They also passed
two notable resolutions:

“First, It is thought expedient, devised and ordeaned that in all

parochines of this Realme the Common Prayeris (probably the
Second Prayer-Book of Edward VI.)[298] be redd owklie (weekly)
on Sounday, and other festuall dayis, publictlie in the Paroche
Kirkis, with the Lessonis of the New and Old Testament,
conforme to the ordour of the Book of Common Prayeris: And yf
the curattis of the parochynes be qualified to cause thame to
reid the samyn; and yf thei be nott, or yf thei refuise, that the
maist qualified in the parish use and read the same. Secoundly,
it is thought necessare that doctrin, preacheing and
interpretatioun of Scriptures be had and used privatlie in Qwyet
housis, without great conventionis of the people tharto, whill
afterward that God move the Prince to grant publict preacheing
be faithful and trew ministeris.”[299]

The Earl of Argyle set the example by maintaining John Douglas,

and making him preach publicly in his mansion.
This conduct evidently alarmed the Queen Mother, who had been
made Regent in 1554 (April 12th), and she attempted to stir the
Primate to exercise his powers for the repression of heresy. The
Archbishop wrote to Argyle urging him to dismiss Douglas,
apologising at the same time for his interference by saying that the
Queen wondered that he could “thole” persons with perverted
doctrine within his diocese.
Another step in advance was taken some time in 1558, when it was
resolved to give the Congregation, the whole company of those in
Scotland who sincerely accepted the Evangelical Reformation, “the
face of a Church,” by the creation and recognition of an authority
which could exercise discipline. A number of elders were chosen “by
common election,” to whom the whole of the brethren promised
obedience. The lack of a publicly recognised ministry was supplied
by laymen, who gave themselves to the work of exhortation; and at
the head of them was to be found Erskine of Dun. The first regularly
constituted Reformed church in Scotland was in the town of Dundee.
[300]

The organisation gave the Protestant leaders boldness, and, through

Sir James Sandilands, they petitioned the Regent to permit them to
worship publicly according to the Reformed fashion, and to reform
the wicked lives of the clergy. This led to the offer of a compromise,
which was at once rejected, as it would have compelled the
Reformed to reverence the Mass, and to approve of prayers to the
saints. The Queen Mother then permitted public worship, save in
Leith and Edinburgh. The Lords of the Congregation next demanded
a suspension of the laws which gave the clergy power to try and
punish heresy, until a General Council, lawfully assembled, should
decide upon points then debated in religion; and that all suspected
of heresy should have a fair trial before “temporal judges.”[301]
When the Regent, who gave them “amyable lookis and good wordes
in aboundance,” refused to allow their petition to come before the
Estates, and kept it “close in hir pocket,” the Reformers resolved to
go to Parliament directly with another petition, in which they
declared that since they had not been able to secure a reformation,
they had resolved to follow their own consciences in matters of
religion; that they would defend themselves and all of their way of
thinking if attacked; that if tumults arose in consequence, the blame
was with those who refused a just reformation; and that in
forwarding this petition they had nothing in view but the reformation
of abuses in religion.[302]
Knox had been invited by the Earl of Glencairn, the Lords Erskine
and Lorn, and James Stewart (afterwards the Earl of Moray), to
return to Scotland in 1557.[303] He reached Dieppe in October, and
found letters awaiting him which told him that the times were not
ripe. The answer he sent spurred the Reforming lords to constitute
the Band of December 1557. It was while he was at Dieppe, chafing
at the news he had received, that he composed the violent treatise,
entitled The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous
Regiment of Women[304]—a book which did more to hamper his
future than anything else. The state of things was exasperating to a
man who longed to be at work in Scotland or England. “Bloody”
Mary in England was hounding on her officials to burn Knox’s co-
religionists, and the Reformation, which had made so much progress
under Edward VI., seemed to be entirely overthrown; while Mary of
Guise, the Queen Mother and Regent in Scotland, was inciting the
unwilling Archbishop of St. Andrews to make use of his legatine and
episcopal powers to repress the believers of his native land. But as
chance would have it, Mary Tudor was dead before the pamphlet
was widely known, and the Queen whom of all others he desired to
conciliate was seated on the throne of England, and had made
William Cecil, the staunchest of Protestants, her Secretary of State.
She could scarcely avoid believing that the Blast was meant for her;
and, even if not, it was based on such general principles that it
might prove dangerous to one whose throne was still insecure. It is
scarcely to be wondered at that the Queen never forgave the
vehement writer, and that the Blast was a continual obstacle to a
complete understanding between the Scottish Reformer and his
English allies.[305] If Knox would never confess publicly to queens,
whether to Elizabeth Tudor or to Mary Stuart; that he had done
wrong, he was ready to say to a friend whom he loved:
 “My rude vehemencie and inconsidered affirmations, which may
rather appear to procead from coler then of zeal and reason, I
do not excuse.”[306]

It was the worse for Knox and for Scotland, for the reign of women
had begun. Charles V., Francis I., and Henry VIII. had passed away,
and the destinies of Europe were to be in the hands of Elizabeth,
Catherine de’ Medici, Mary Stuart, and Philip of Spain, the most
felinely feminine of the four.
Events marched fast in Scotland after Knox returned in the early
summer of 1559. The Queen Regent and the Lords of the
Congregation were facing each other, determined on a trial of
strength. Knox reached Edinburgh on May 2nd, 1559, and hurried on
to Dundee, where the Reformed had gathered in some force. They
had resolved to support their brethren in maintaining public worship
according to the usages of the Reformed Church, and in repressing
“idolatrie” in all towns where a majority of the inhabitants had
declared for the Reformed religion. The Regent threw down the
gauntlet by summoning the preachers to appear before her, and by
inhibiting their preaching. The Lords took it up by resolving that they
would answer the summons and appear along with their preachers.
A letter was addressed to the Regent (May 6th, 1559) by “The
professouris of Christis Evangell in the realme of Scotland.” It was an
admirable statement of the principles of the Scottish Reformation,
and may be thus summarised:

“It records the hope, once entertained by the writers, that God
would make her the instrument of setting up and maintaining
his Word and true worship, of defending his congregation, and
of downputting all idolatry, abomination, and superstition in the
realm; it expresses their grief on learning that she was
determined to do the very opposite; it warns her against
crossing the bounds of her own office, and usurping a power in
Christ’s kingdom which did not belong to her; it distinguishes
clearly between the civil jurisdiction and the spiritual; it asks her
 to recall her letters inhibiting God’s messengers; it insists that
His message ought to be received even though the speaker
should lack the ordinary vocation; it claims that the ministers
who had been inhibited were sent by God, and were also called
according to Scriptural order; it points out that her commands
must be disobeyed if contrary to God’s, and that the enemies
were craftily inducing her to command unjust things so that the
professors, when they disobeyed, might be condemned for
sedition and rebellion; it pled with her to have pity on those
who were seeking the glory of God and her true obedience; it
declared that, by God’s help, they would go forward in the way
they had begun, that they would receive and assist His ministers
and Word, and that they would never join themselves again to
the abominations they had forsaken, though all the powers on
earth should command them to do so; it conveyed their humble
submission to her, in all obedience due to her in peace, in war,
in body, in goods and in lands; and it closed with the prayer that
the eternal God would instruct, strengthen, and lead her by His
Spirit in the way that was acceptable to Him.”[307]

Then began a series of trials of strength in which the Regent had

generally the better, because she was supplied with disciplined
troops from France, which were more than a match for the feudal
levies of the Lords of the Congregation. The uprising of the people
against the Regent and the Prelates was characterised, as in France
and the Low Countries, with an outbreak of iconoclasm which did no
good to the Protestant cause. In the three countries the “raschall
multitude” could not be restrained by the exhortation of the
preachers nor by the commandment of the magistrates from
destroying “the places of idolatrie.”[308]
From the beginning, Knox had seen that the Reformers had small
hope of ultimate success unless they were aided from England; and
he was encouraged to expect help because he knew that the
salvation of Protestant England lay in its support of the Lords of the
Congregation in Scotland.
The years from 1559 to 1567 were the most critical in the whole
history of the Reformation. The existence of the Protestantism of all
Europe was involved in the struggle in Scotland; and for the first and
perhaps last time in her history the eyes that had the furthest vision,
whether in Rome, for centuries the citadel of mediævalism, or in
Geneva, the stronghold of Protestantism, were turned towards the
little backward northern kingdom. They watched the birth-throes of
a new nation, a British nation which was coming into being. Two
peoples, long hereditary foes, were coalescing; the Romanists in
England recognised the Scottish Queen as their legitimate sovereign,
and the Protestants in Scotland looked for aid to their brethren in
England. The question was: Would the new nation accept the
Reformed religion, or would the reaction triumph? If Knox and the
Congregation gained the upper hand in Scotland, and if Cecil was
able to guide England in the way he meant to lead it (and the two
men were necessary to each other, and knew it), then the
Reformation was safe. If Scotland could be kept for France and the
Roman Church, and its Romanist Queen make good her claim to the
English throne, then the Reformation would be crushed not merely
within Great Britain, but in Germany and the Low Countries also. So
thought the politicians, secular and ecclesiastical, in Rome and
Geneva, in Paris, Madrid, and in London. The European situation had
been summed up by Cecil: “The Emperor is aiming at the
sovereignty of Europe, which he cannot obtain without the
suppression of the Reformed religion, and, unless he crushes
England, he cannot crush the Reformation.” In this peril a Scotland
controlled by the Guises would have been fatal to the existence of
the Reformation.
In 1559 the odds seemed in favour of reaction, if only its supporters
were whole-hearted enough to put aside for the time national
rivalries. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, concluded scarcely a
month before Knox reached Scotland (April 1559), had secret
clauses which bound the Kings of France and Spain to crush the
Protestantism of Europe, in terms which made the young Prince of
Orange, when he learned them, vow silently to devote his life to
protect his fellow-countrymen and drive the “scum of the Spaniards”
out of the Netherlands. Henry II. of France, with his Edict of
Chateaubriand and his Chambre Ardente, with the Duke of Guise
and the Cardinal Lorraine to counsel him, and Diane of Poitiers to
keep him up to the mark, was doing his best to exterminate the
Protestants of France. Dr. Christopher Mundt kept reporting to
Queen Elizabeth and her Minister the symptoms of a general
combination against the Protestants of Europe—symptoms ranging
from a proposed conquest of Denmark to the Emperor’s forbidding
members of his Household to attend Protestant services.[309]
Throckmorton wrote almost passionately from Paris urging Cecil to
support the Scottish Lords of the Congregation; and even Dr. Mundt
in Strassburg saw that the struggle in Scotland was the most
important fact in the European situation.[310]
Yet it was difficult for Cecil to send the aid which Knox and the
Scottish Protestants needed sorely. It meant that the sovereign of
one country aided men of another country who were de jure rebels
against their own sovereign. It seemed a hazardous policy in the
case of a Queen like Elizabeth, who was not yet freed from the
danger arising from rebellious subjects. There was France, with
which England had just made peace. Cecil had difficulties with
Elizabeth. She did not like Calvin himself. She had no sympathy with
his theology, which, with its mingled sob and hosanna, stirred the
hearts of oppressed peoples. There was Knox and his Blast, to say
nothing of his appealing to the commonalty of his country. “God
keep us from such visitations as Knockes hath attempted in
Scotland; the people to be orderers of things!” wrote Dr. Parker to
Cecil on the 6th of November.[311] Yet Cecil knew—no man better—
that if the Lords of the Congregation failed there was little hope for a
Protestant England, and that Elizabeth’s crown and Dr. Parker’s mitre
depended on the victory of Knox in Scotland.
He watched the struggle across the border. He had made up his
mind as early as July 8th, 1559, that assistance must be given to the
Lords of the Congregation “with all fair promises first, next with
money, and last with arms.”[312] The second stage of his programme
was reached in November; and, two days before the Archbishop of
Canterbury was piously invoking God’s help to keep Knox’s influences
out of England, Cecil had resolved to send money to Scotland and to
entrust its distribution to Knox. The memorandum runs: Knox to be
a counsel with the payments, to see that they be employed to the
common action.[313]
The third stage—assistance with arms—came sooner than might
have been expected. The condition of France became more
favourable. Henry II. had died (July 10th, 1559), and the Guises
ruled France through their niece Mary and her sickly devoted
husband. But the Bourbon Princes and many of the higher nobles did
not take kindly to the sudden rise of a family which had been French
for only two generations, and the easiest way to annoy them was to
favour publicly or secretly “those of the religion.” There was unrest
in France. “Beat the iron while it is hot,” Throckmorton wrote from
Paris; “their fair flatterings and sweet language are only to gain
time.”[314] Cecil struck. He had a sore battle with his royal mistress,
but he won.[315] An arrangement was come to between England and
the Lords of the Congregation acting on behalf “of the second
person of the realm of Scotland” (Treaty of Berwick, May 10th,
1560).[316] An English fleet entered the Firth of Forth; an English
army beleaguered the French troops in Leith Fort; and the end of it
was that France was obliged to let go its hold on Scotland, and
never thoroughly recovered it (Treaty of Edinburgh, July 6th, 1560).
[317] The great majority of the Scottish people saw in the English
victory only their deliverance from French tyranny, and for the first
time a conquering English army left the Scottish soil followed by
blessings and not curses. The Scottish Liturgy, which had contained
Prayers used in the Churches of Scotland in the time of their
persecution by the Frenchmen, was enriched by a Thanksgiving unto
God after our deliverance from the tyranny of the Frenchmen; with
prayers made for the continuance of the peace betwixt the realms of
England and Scotland, which contained the following petition:
 “And seeing that when we by our owne power were altogether
unable to have freed ourselves from the tyranny of strangers,
and from the bondage and thraldome pretended against us,
Thou of thyne especial goodnes didst move the hearts of our
neighbours (of whom we deserved no such favour) to take upon
them the common burthen with us, and for our deliverance not
only to spend the lives of many, but also to hazards the estate
and tranquillity of their Realme and commonwealth: Grant unto
us, O Lord, that with such reverence we may remember thy
benefits received that after this in our defaute we never enter
into hostilitie against the Realme and nation of England.”[318]

The Regent had died during the course of the hostilities, and Cecil,
following and improving upon the wise policy of Protector Somerset,
left it entirely to the Scots to settle their own affairs.[319]
Now or never was the opportunity for Knox and the Lords of the
Congregation. They had not been idle during the months since Knox
had arrived in Scotland. They had strengthened the ties uniting them
by three additional Bands. At a meeting of the Congregation of the
West with the Congregations of Fife, Perth, Dundee, Angus, Mearns,
and Montrose, held in Perth (May 31st, 1559), they had covenanted
to spare neither

“labouris, goodis, substancis, bodyis, and lives, in manteaning

the libertie of the haill Congregatioun and everie member
thairof, aganis whatsomevir power that shall intend trubill for
the caus of religion.”[320]

They had renewed this Band in Edinburgh on July 13th; and at

Stirling (Aug. 1st) they had covenanted,

“that nane of us sall in tymeis cuming pas to the Quenis Grace

Dowriare, to talk or commun with hir for any letter without
consent of the rest and commone consultatioun.”[321]
They had the bitter satisfaction of knowing that although the French
troops and officers of the Regent were too strong for them in the
field, the insolence and rapine of these foreigners was rousing all
ranks and classes in Scotland to see that their only deliverance lay in
the English alliance and the triumph of the Reformation. The Band of
1560 (April 27th) included, with “the nobilitie, barronis, and
gentilmen professing Chryst Jesus in Scotland ... dyveris utheris that
joyint with us, for expelling of the French army: amangis quham the
Erle of Huntlie was principall.”[322]
The Estates or Parliament met in Edinburgh on July 10th, 1560.
Neither the French nor the English soldiers had left; so they
adjourned to August 1st, and again to the 8th.[323]
Meanwhile Knox and the Congregation were busy. The Reformer
excelled himself in the pulpit of St. Giles’, lecturing daily on the Book
of the Prophet Haggai (on the building of the Temple)—“a doctrine
proper for the time.”[324] Randolph wrote to Cecil, Aug. 15th:

“Sermons are daylie, and greate audience; though dyvers of the

nobles present ar not resolved in religion, yet do thei repayre to
the prechynges, which gevethe a good hope to maynie that God
wyll bowe their hartes.”[325]

The Congregation held a great thanksgiving service in St. Giles’; and

after it arranged for eight fully constituted churches, and appointed
five superintendents in matters of religion.[326] They also prepared a
petition for Parliament asking for a settlement of the religious
question in the way they desired.[327] At the request of the Estates
or Parliament, Knox and five companions prepared The Confessioun
of Faith professit and belevit be the Protestantis within the Realme
of Scotland, which was ratified and approved as “hailsome and
sound doctrine, groundit upoun the infallible trewth of Godis Word.”
It was afterwards issued by the Estates as the “summe of that
doctrin quhilk we professe, and for the quhilk we haif sustenit
infamy and daingear.”[328] Seven days later (Aug. 24th), the Estates
decreed that “the Bischope of Rome have na jurisdictioun nor
authoritie in this Realme in tymes cuming”; they annulled all Acts of
previous Parliaments which were contrary to the Confession of Faith;
and they forbade the saying, hearing, or being present at Mass,
under penalty of confiscation of goods and bodily punishment at the
discretion of the magistrates for the first offence, of banishment for
the second, and of death for the third.[329] These severe penalties,
however, were by no means rigidly enforced. Lesley (Roman Catholic
Bishop of Ross) says in his History:

“The clemency of the heretic nobles must not be left

unmentioned, since at that time they exiled few Catholic on the
score of religion, imprisoned fewer, and put none to death.”[330]

One thing still required to be done—to draft a constitution for the

new Protestant Church. The work was committed to the same
ministers who had compiled the Confession. They had been asked to
prepare it as early as April 29th, and they had it ready for the Lords
of the Congregation within a month. It was not approved by the
Estates; but was ordered to be submitted to the next general
meeting, and was meanwhile translated into Latin, to be sent to
Calvin, Viret, and Beza in Geneva.[331] The delay seemed to some to
arise from the unwillingness of many of the lords to see “their carnal
liberty and worldly commoditie impaired”;[332] but another cause
was also at work. Cecil evidently wished that the Church in Scotland
should be uniform with the Church in England, and had instructed
Randolph to press this question of uniformity. It was a favourite idea
with statesmen of both countries—pressed on Scotland by England
during the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and by Scotland on
England in the Solemn League and Covenant. Randolph was wise
enough to see that such uniformity was an impossibility.[333]
The Confession of the Faith and Doctrine, Believed and Professed by
the Protestants of Scotland, was translated into Latin, and, under the
title Confessio Scoticana, occupies an honoured place in the
collections of the creeds of the Reformed Churches. It remained the
symbol of the Church of Scotland during the first stormy century of
its existence. It was displaced by the Westminster Confession in
1647, only on the understanding that the later document was “in
nothing contrary” to the former; and continued authoritative long
after that date.[334] Drawn up in haste by a small number of
theologians, it is more sympathetic and human than most creeds,
and has commended itself to many who object to the impersonal
logic of the Westminster Confession.[335] The first sentence of the
preface gives the tone to the whole:

“Lang have we thirsted, dear Brethren, to have notified to the

Warld the Sum of that Doctrine quhilk we professe, and for
quhilk we have susteined Infamie and Danger; Bot sik has bene
the Rage of Sathane againis us, and againis Christ Jesus his
eternal Veritie latlie now againe born amangst us, that to this
daie na Time has been graunted unto us to cleir our
Consciences as maist gladlie we wald have done.”[336]

The preface also puts more clearly than any similiar document save
the First Confession of Basel the reverence felt by the early
Reformers for the Word of God and the renunciation of any claim to
infallibility of interpretation:

“Protestand that gif onie man will note in this our confessioun
onie Artickle repugnand to Gods halie word, that it wald pleis
him of his gentleness and for christian charities sake to
admonish us of the same in writing; and we upon our honoures
and fidelitie, be Gods grace do promise unto him satisfaction fra
the mouth of God, that is fra his haly scriptures, or else
reformation of that quhilk he sal prove to be amisse.”

The Confession itself contains the truths common to the Reformed

creeds of the Reformation. It contains all the Œcumenical doctrines,
as they have been called—that is, the truths taught in the early
Œcumenical Councils, and embodied in the Apostles’ and Nicene
Creeds; and adds those doctrines of grace, of pardon, and of
enlightenment through Word and Spirit which were brought into
special prominence by the Reformation revival of religion. The
Confession is more remarkable for quaint suggestiveness of titles
than for any special peculiarity of doctrine. Thus the doctrine of
revelation is defined by itself, apart from the doctrine of Scripture,
under the title of “The Revelation of the Promise.” Election is treated
according to the view of earlier Calvinism as a means of grace, and
an evidence of the “invincible power” of the Godhead in salvation.
The “notes by which the true Kirk is discerned from the false” are
said to be the true preaching of the Word of God, the right
administration of the sacraments, and ecclesiastical discipline rightly
administered. The authority of Scriptures is said to come from God,
and to depend neither “on man nor angels”; and the Church knows
them to be true, because “the true kirk always heareth and obeyeth
the voice of her own spouse and pastor.”
Randolph says in a letter to Cecil (September 7th, 1560) that before
the Confession was publicly read it was revised by Lethington and
Lord James Stewart, who “dyd mytigate the austeritie of maynie
wordes and sentences,” and that a certain article which dealt with
the “dysobediens that subjects owe unto their magistrates” was
advised to be left out.[337] Thus amended it was read over, and then
re-read article by article in the Estates, and passed without
alteration,[338]—“no man present gainsaying.”[339] When it was read
before the Estates:

“Maynie offered to sheede ther blude in defence of the same.

The old Lord of Lynsay, as grave and goodly a man as ever I
sawe, said, ‘I have lyved maynie yeres, I am the eldest in thys
Compagnie of my sorte; nowe that yt hathe pleased God to lett
me see thys daye wher so maynie nobles and other have
allowed so worthie a work, I will say with Simion, Nunc
dimittis.’”[340]
A copy was sent to Cecil, and Maitland of Lethington assured him
that if there was anything in the Confession of Faith which the
English Minister misliked, “It may eyther be changed (if the mater so
permit) or at least in some thyng qualifieed”; which shows the
anxiety of the Scots to keep step with their English allies.[341]
The authors of the Confession were asked to draw up a short
statement showing how a Reformed Church could best be governed.
The result was the remarkable document which was afterwards
called the First Book of Discipline, or the Policie and Discipline of the
Church.[342] It provided for the government of the Church by kirk-
sessions, synods, and general assemblies; and recognised as office-
bearers in the Church, ministers, teachers, elders, deacons,
superintendents, and readers. The authors of this Book of Discipline
professed to go directly to Scripture for the outlines of the system of
Church government which they advised their countrymen to adopt,
and their profession was undoubtedly sincere and likewise just. They
were, however, all of them men in sympathy with Calvin, and had
had personal intercourse with the Protestants of France. Their form
of government is clearly inspired by Calvin’s ideas as stated in his
Institution, and follows closely the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of the
French Church. The offices of superintendent and reader were added
to the usual threefold or fourfold Presbyterian form of government.
The former was due to the unsettled state of the country and the
scarcity of Protestant pastors. The Superintendents took charge of
districts corresponding not very exactly with the Episcopal dioceses,
and were ordered to make annual reports to the General Assembly
of the ecclesiastical and religious state of their provinces, and to
preach in the various churches in their district. The Readers owed
their existence to the small number of Protestant pastors, to the
great importance attached by the early Scottish Reformers to an
educated ministry, and also to the difficulty of procuring funds for
the support of pastors in every parish. They were of two classes—
those of a higher grade, who were permitted to deliver addresses
and who were called Exhorters; and those of the lower grade, whose
duty it was to read “distinctly” the Common Prayers and the
Scriptures. Both classes were expected to teach the younger
children. Exhorters who studied theology diligently and satisfied the
synod of their learning could rise to be ministers. The Book of
Discipline contains a chapter on the patrimony of the Church which
urges the necessity of preserving monies possessed by the Church
for the maintenance of religion, the support of education, and the
help of the poor. The presence of this chapter prevented the book
being accepted by the Estates in the same way as the Confession of
Faith. The barons, greater and lesser, who sat there had in too many
cases appropriated the “patrimony of the Kirk” to their own private
uses, and were unwilling to sign a document which condemned their
conduct. The Book of Discipline approved by the General Assembly,
and signed by a large number of the nobles and burgesses, never
received the legal sanction accorded to the Confession.
The General Assembly of the Reformed Church of Scotland met for
the first time in 1560; and thereafter, in spite of the struggle in
which the Church was involved, meetings were held generally twice
a year, sometimes oftener, and the Church was organised for active
work.
A third book, variously called The Book of Common Order,[343] The
Order of Geneva, and now frequently Knox’s Liturgy, was a directory
for the public worship and services of the Church. It was usually
bound up with a metrical version of the Psalms, and is often spoken
of as the Psalm Book.
Calvin’s Catechism was translated and ordered to be used for the
instruction of the youth in the faith. Later, the Heidelberg Catechism
was translated and annotated for the same purpose. They were both
superseded by Craig’s Catechism, which in its turn gave way to the
Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Divines.[344]
The democratic ideas of Presbyterianism, enforced by the practical
necessity of trusting in the people, made the Scotch Reformers pay
great attention to education. All the leaders of the Reformation,
whether in Germany, France, or Holland, had felt the importance of
enlightening the commonalty; but perhaps Scotland and Holland
were the two countries where the attempt was most successful. The
education of the people was no new thing in Scotland; and although
in the troublous times before and during the Reformation high
schools had disappeared and the Universities had decayed, still the
craving for learning had not altogether died out. Knox and his friend
George Buchanan had a magnificent scheme of endowing schools in
every parish, high schools or colleges in all important towns, and of
increasing the power and influence of the Universities. Their scheme,
owing to the greed of the Barons, who had seized the Church
property, was little more than a devout imagination; but it laid hold
on the mind of Scotland, and the lack of endowments was more
than compensated by the craving of the people for education. The
three Universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen took new
life, and a fourth, the University of Edinburgh, was founded. Scotch
students who had been trained in the continental schools of
learning, and who had embraced the Reformed faith, were employed
to superintend the newly-organised educational system of the
country, and the whole organisation was brought into sympathy with
the everyday life of the people by the preference given to day
schools over boarding schools, and by a system of inspection by the
most pious and learned men in each circle of parishes. Knox also
was prepared to order compulsory attendance at school on the part
of two classes of society, the upper and the lower—the middle class
he thought might be trusted to its own natural desire for learning;
and he wished to see the State so exercise power and patronage as
to lay hold on all youths “of parts” and compel them to proceed to
the high schools and Universities, that the commonwealth might get
the greatest good of their service.
The form of Church government given in the First Book of Discipline
represented rather an outline requiring to be filled in than a picture
of what actually existed for many a year after 1560. It provided for a
form of Church government by ecclesiastical councils rising from the
Session of the individual congregation up to a National Assembly,
and its first requisite was a fully organised church in every parish
ruled by a minister with his Session or council of Elders and his body
of Deacons. But there was a great lack of men having the necessary
amount of education to be ordained as ministers, and consequently
there were few fully equipped congregations. The first court in
existence was the Kirk-Session; it was in being in every organised
congregation. The second in order of time was the General
Assembly. Its first meeting was in Edinburgh, Dec. 20th, 1560. Forty-
two members were present, of whom only six were ministers. These
were the small beginnings from which it grew. The Synods came into
existence later. At first they were yearly gatherings of the ministry of
the Superintendent’s district, to which each congregation within the
district was asked to send an Elder and a Deacon. The Court of the
Presbytery came latest into existence; it had its beginnings in the
“weekly exercise.”
The work had been rapidly done. Barely a year had elapsed between
the return of Knox to Scotland and the establishment of the
Reformed religion by the Estates. Calvin wrote from Geneva (Nov.
8th, 1559):

“As we wonder at success incredible in so short a time, so also

we give great thanks to God, whose special blessing here shines
forth.”

And Knox himself, writing from the midst of the battle, says:[345]

“We doe nothing but goe about Jericho, blowing with trumpets,
as God giveth strength, hoping victorie by his power alone.”[346]

But dangers had been imminent; shot at through his window, deadly
ambushes set, and the man’s powers taxed almost beyond
endurance:

“In twenty-four hours I have not four free to naturall rest and
ease of this wicked carcass ... I have nead of a good and an
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