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 The Reformation in England and in Scotland.

I n the progress of civilization, the middle of the sixteenth century

may be taken as the turning point between the old past, with its
feudalism, its authoritative church, its restricted culture, its
antiquated science,—and the newer order of things from which has
sprung the ever-expanding present. Since Guttenberg first used
moveable types, a century had so far perfected his invention that
books were becoming plentiful; and the one which is morally and
socially, as well as religiously, the chief book in the world, had been
translated into the mother-tongue of England. Towns were asserting
their chartered privileges. The telescope was ransacking the
heavens, and, for the first time, Magellan had circumnavigated the
globe. Cannon were used in warfare, and iron had been smelted in
England. The newspaper had been born; and Law was gradually
gaining the ascendancy over disorder and old prerogative.
The Reformation of religion had established itself in Central and
Northern Europe, and was now fighting its way in England and
Scotland. But the battle with Papal authority and its dogmatic creeds
was begun under very different circumstances, was carried on by
very different methods, and had very different results in the two
neighbouring countries.
How did the English Reformation come about? During nearly forty
years in the first half of the sixteenth century (1509 to 1547)
England was ruled by the last of her really despotic kings, Henry
VIII. As everybody knows, Henry had a peculiar domestic
experience,—he married in succession six wives. As fresh fancies
took him, he rid himself of four of these—two by divorce, and two by
the headsman’s axe. One wife, Jane Seymour, died in childbirth of
his only son, who succeeded him as Edward VI. Wife No. 6, by her
extraordinary prudence contrived to escape destruction, and
survived the kingly monster. This is a harsh term for the historical
father of the English church, and some modern historians of ability
and repute have done their best—as has been done in the cases of
Macbeth and Richard III., as these kings are portrayed by
Shakespeare—to partially whitewash Henry. That he was, in common
parlance, a great king, and a man of ability, of energy and decision,
and that under him England prospered, and held an advanced
position amongst the nations, few will dispute; but that he was a
cruel, lustful, selfish tyrant seems equally undeniable. He made use
of men and women as subservient to his will or his pleasure, and
when his ends were so served, he ruthlessly destroyed them. His
great minister, Wolsey, would not bend to his wishes in the matter of
divorcing his first wife, so Wolsey was degraded, and in his old age
sent into seclusion, to die of a broken heart. And in succession
Thomas Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, and the Earl of Surrey, suffered
the fate of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.
Henry, when a young man, opposed the Reformation. He wrote a
book against Luther and his heresies, which so pleased the Pope
that he granted Henry the title of Defender of the Faith. This papal
title has passed down by inheritance through all succeeding English
sovereigns; every coin from the mintage of Queen Victoria bears its
initial letters.
Henry first married, under the Pope’s dispensation, the widow of
his elder brother Arthur, Catherine of Arragon, by whom he had a
daughter, afterwards Queen Mary. But the King fell in love—if, in the
passions of such a man, the noble word love can be rightly used—
with Anne Boleyn, one of Catherine’s lady attendants. To gain Anne,
Henry, after a number of years of wedded life with Catherine, all at
once became conscience-stricken that his marriage with her was an
unlawful one; and he asked the Pope to recall his dispensation and
annul the marriage. Now, Catherine was sister to the Emperor of
Germany, Charles the Fifth, one of the Pope’s best supporters in
these sad Reformation times. And, moreover, to have rescinded the
dispensation would have been an admission of papal fallibility; so
the Pope gave Henry a refusal.
Henry threw off his allegiance to the Pope, and had himself
acknowledged by Parliament as the supreme head of the English
Church. Powerful, unscrupulous, and popular, he confiscated church
revenues, broke up monasteries, and by Act of Parliament, in 1537,
completed politically the English Reformation. It was, so far as the
King was concerned, a reformation only in name, for as to liberty of
conscience, and the right of private judgment, he was as arrogant a
bigot as any pope who ever wore the tiara. He vacillated in his own
opinions, but enforced those he held at the time by such severe
enactments, that many persons of both religions were burned as
heretics.
And from the Anglican Church, so founded on despotism and
intolerance, can we wonder that the shadow of Rome has never
been thoroughly lifted? In the abstract it is essentially a close
corporation of ecclesiastics, the mere people hardly counting as a
necessary factor. Its sacraments have still miraculous or supernatural
properties attached to them; no one must officiate therein who has
not been ordained, and the assumed powers of ordination came
through the Romish Church. From the older Church it adopted
certain creeds, as dogmatic in their assertions, and intolerant in their
fulminations, as were ever Papal Bulls or Decrees of Councils. Of
course the mellowing influence of time, the broadening thoughts of
later years, and the rivalship of Nonconformity, have done much to
take out old stings and deaden old intolerance; whilst a cloud of
witnesses for righteousness and progress in the Church itself, have
raised it above its old self, and brought it in nearer touch with the
spirit of the present age.

The history of the Scottish Reformation is an entirely different one.

Instead of being originated and fostered by State authority, it was a
fierce and obstinate battle with such authority. Scotland was then
under one of its disastrous regencies, that of Mary of Guise, the
widow of King James V., acting for her infant daughter Mary, known
afterwards in history as the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of
Scots. The Reformation in England had sent a wave of agitation into
Scotland, and this wave advanced strongly as refugees from the
cruel persecutions of Mary Tudor flocked into the Northern Kingdom;
and as the Regent, with her coadjutor, the bigoted and relentless
Cardinal Beaton, also began to persecute the new faith, and send its
adherents to the stake; for it has ever been found to be a true
saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” In
revenge for the burning, in 1545, of one of the saintliest of men,
George Wishart, a party of the Reformers murdered the Cardinal in
his own castle of St. Andrews, from one of the windows of which he
had gloated over the martyr’s cruel death.
In 1557, a number of the Reformers, including several noblemen,
and styling themselves the Lords of the Congregation, entered into a
mutual bond or covenant, “To defend the whole congregation of
Christ against Satan and all his powers; to have prayers made and
the sacraments administered in the vulgar tongue; in worship to use
only the Bible, and the Prayer-book of Edward VI.” In 1559, the
Regent, who was entirely under French influence, and had been
gradually filling high offices with Frenchmen, and accumulating
French troops, issued a proclamation, forbidding any one to preach
or administer the sacraments without the authority of the bishops.
And at this period a sterling man fitted to be a leader in such
turbulent times, John Knox, appears in the forefront of the conflict.
He had been college-bred, and became a priest, but adopted the
Reformation in its Calvinistic phase, and, as he had opportunity,
disseminated the new tenets with eloquence and zeal. After Beaton’s
death, his slayers, with others, and Knox amongst these, held out
the castle of St. Andrews for fourteen months, but had to yield at
last to their French besiegers, and were sent prisoners to France.
Knox had to work in the galleys on the river Loire. But again he is in
Scotland, preaching from place to place. After a powerful sermon
against idolatry in a church in Perth, a priest began to celebrate
mass. Heated by the glowing words of Knox, the people broke the
images in the church. The Regent was very wroth, she deposed the
Protestant provost of the city, and threatened it with French troops.
The Congregation raised troops and appealed to Elizabeth, now on
the English throne, for aid. Elizabeth sent some troops, and there
was fighting with varied successes, until, by a treaty made in
Edinburgh, the French agreed to abandon Scotland, and the
Protestants were to be allowed the free exercise of their religion. In
the Scottish Parliament of 1560 there was a solemn abjuration of the
Pope and the mass. And the Geneva Confession of Faith was
constituted the theological standard of the kingdom.

JOHN KNOX.

Differing from the English Church with its orders, its episcopacy,
and its sovereign headship, the Scottish Reformers denied the
authority of the sovereign, or secular government, to interfere in the
affairs of the Church; determining that these affairs should be under
the direction of a Court of Delegates, the greater number being
chosen from the ministers, all of whom were of the same standing
and dignity, and the remainder—with equal authority in the
deliberations—of a certain number of the laity, called Elders, thus
forming what is called “The General Assembly of the Church.” The
sacraments were to be simple observances, spiritual only as they
were spiritually received. Church edifices were regarded as merely
stone and lime structures, having no claims to special regard, except
during divine service. So to these Reformers, defacing in the
churches what had been considered sacred statuary and
ornamentation, even to the sign of the cross, was deemed a ready
mode of testifying against Popish superstitions. As to the abbeys and
monasteries—“Pull down the nests,” said stern John Knox, “and the
rooks will fly away.”
Thus the Kirk of Scotland was essentially democratic in its origin,
and, although always rigid and often intolerant, it has in the main so
continued. Its theological tenets, although wordy and abstruse, were
a whetstone to the intellect, and helped to develope a serious and
thoughtful, a reading, and an argumentative people. Shepherds
meeting each other on the hillsides, weavers with their yarn at the
village beetling-stone, would, like Milton’s angels:—

“Reason high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute.”

The English Church, on the other hand, did not encourage

doctrinal discussion, but simple faith in its articles, and obedience to
its rubric.
JOHN KNOX’S HOUSE.
 But—which we would hardly have expected from its complex
system of faith, and its niceties in phraseology—the Presbyterian Kirk
produced zeal and earnest devotedness in the Scottish people.
Without ordination by a bishop, whose orders were presumed to
have come in direct succession from the Apostles, the ministers were
held in high reverence and esteem; without printed prayers its
common members learned to pray. It had its army of martyrs;
except amongst Puritan Nonconformists, the Scottish Covenanters
have hardly their English representatives.
John Knox largely impressed the Reformed Church with his own
individuality. No doubt he was rigid, and, to our modern ideas,
narrow-minded and intolerant. He would not have accomplished the
work he did if he had not himself thoroughly believed in it, as the
greatest work which then needed to be done. He has been blamed
for speaking harsh words to Queen Mary; but he had to speak what
he felt to be stern truths, for which honied words could hardly fit
themselves. Mary, accustomed to fascinate the eyes and sway the
wills of all who approached her, demanded of Knox:—“Who are you
who dare dictate to the sovereign and nobles of this realm?” “I am,
Madam,” answered Knox, “a subject of this realm.” A subject, and
therefore a co-partner in the realm; to the fullest extent of his
knowledge and his capabilities responsible for its right government;
just as the Hebrew prophets claimed a right to stand before their
kings, and, not always in smooth words, to denounce sin and
hypocrisy, oppression, and backslidings from the law of God.
 JOHN KNOX’S PULPIT, ST.
GILES’S.
(From the Scottish Antiquarian
Museum.)

For supporting the introduction of bishops into the Presbyterian

Church, as impairing the republican equality of its ministers, Knox
had bitterly rebuked the Regent Morton. But when, in November,
1572, the Regent stood by the grave of the Reformer, it was in a
choking voice that he pronounced the grand eulogium:—“There lies
he, who never feared the face of man.”
At the era of the Reformation no translation of the Scriptures had
yet been printed in Scotland; what copies in the vernacular had been
brought from England, were in the hands of the wealthy; indeed few
of the common people could then have read them. The parish school
as yet was not. The old church had not encouraged inquiry into the
rationale of its dogmas, and although theological discussion was in
the air, it had not penetrated into the lower strata of Scottish society.
And thus the popular outburst against the old church was hardly
founded on conscience and conviction; in its beginnings at least, it
was more a revolution against priestly domination.

GRAVE OF JOHN KNOX.

But the cry of idolatry was raised. In the destruction of images in

the churches, the leading reformers found the populace only too
willing agents. Even architectural ornamentation—without religious
significance—was removed or destroyed, the capitals of pillars were
covered with plaster, the very tombs were rifled and defaced. The
parish church had been the nucleus around which, for centuries, the
veneration and the spiritual thought of past times had revolved, and
now the idea of its “consecration” was to be banished from the
popular mind. The reformers encouraged male worshippers to enter
churches with their hats on—uncovering during prayer, psalm-
singing, and scripture reading, and resuming their hats when the
minister gave out the text for his sermon. When the discourse
touched a popular chord, there was applause by clapping of hands
and stamping of feet. Rome had demanded unquestioning
submission to its authority,—an unreserved veneration for its ritual;
and in breaking away from this bondage, the spirit of reverence was
largely impaired.
Thus to other religionists, the form of worship in a Scottish church
appeared bald and careless, hardly decorous. There was no private
prayer on sitting down; in the public prayers, the stubborn
presbyterian knee did not bend,—all stood upright, and the eyes
would roam all over the church. In singing the psalms, there was no
assistance from the swelling tones of an organ; gloves were put on
during the benediction, and all were prepared for a hurried exit at its
Amen. Funeral sermons, and even tomb-stones, were proscribed by
the early reformers. One in King James’s English retinue,
accompanying him in a visit to Scotland, remarked,—“The Scots
christen without the sign of the cross; they marry without the ring;
and bury without any funeral service.”
Although the old psalmist said,—“O sing unto the Lord a new
song,”—the Presbyterians did not seem to think that anything had
occurred in the following two thousand years, to incite to new songs
of praise and thanksgiving: so they continued to sing only the
Hebrew psalms. It was not until 1745 that the General Assembly
authorized the use of Paraphrases,—that is, metrical versions of
other portions of Scripture, but many congregations refused them.
Now, there are authorized hymnals—the organ is again finding its
place in the churches—and other changes have come about,
bringing the form of service in nearer consonance with that of other
churches, and with the more ornate tendency of the present times.
 The Rival Queens—Mary and Elizabeth.

M ary’s evil fortunes began with her birth. Her dying father, heart-
broken over a disastrous battle, lived only a week after his
“poor lass,” as he called her, was born. Then Henry VIII. of England
saw in this infant niece of his a means of uniting the two crowns,
much in the way by which a wolf unites itself with the lamb it
devours, by having a marriage contracted between her and his only
son, Prince Edward. He sent negotiators to enforce, under threats,
his project. There was much opposition amongst the Scottish
nobility. It looked like surrendering their country to England. They
said to Henry’s negotiators, “If your lad were a lass, and our lass
were a lad, would you then be so earnest in this matter; and could
you be content that our lad should, by marrying your lass, become
King of England? No! your nation would never agree to have a Scot
for King; and we will not have an Englishman as our King. And tho’
the whole nobility of the realm should consent thereto, yet the
common people would rebel against it; the very boys would hurl
stones, and the wives handle their distaffs against it.”
Henry was wroth exceedingly, threatened war, and demanded the
custody of the child-Queen. To have him for an ally against the
Queen-Regent and her minister, the persecutor Beaton, the
Reformers temporized, and the Scottish Parliament consented to the
match; Mary to be sent to Henry when she was ten years old.
In the meantime Henry got embroiled with France; and Scotland,
under the influence of the Queen-Regent, allied itself with that
country. Henry sent an army into Scotland. There were some
Scottish successes; but at Pinkie, in 1547, the English general
Somerset gained a complete victory. Before this event Henry had
died; but his long cherished object, the possession of the child of
Scotland, was still pressed, and now seemed on the point of
attainment. But the Scottish people were irritated and alarmed to
such a degree that they resolved to make the projected marriage
impossible, by marrying their young mistress to the Dauphin of
France, and sending her to be brought up at the French court. To
this resolve Parliament gave a hasty assent; and in July 1548, the
poor child, now in her sixth year, accompanied by her four Maries—
girls her own age, of noble birth, her present play-fellows and future
companions—was shipped off to France.
Prince Edward, who succeeded Henry as Edward VI., was twelve
years of age when his father died, and he reigned only four years.
Then there was the painful incident of Lady Jane Grey being pushed
forward by her ambitious kindred as a claimant to the throne; the
venture being death to her and to them. And then Henry’s daughter
by his first wife became Queen. A rigid Catholic, she at once took
steps, intolerant, relentless, and cruel, to re-establish the old faith.
The savage persecutions of her reign have rendered it for ever
infamous. She goes down through all time as the Bloody Mary.
Smithfield blazed with the fires of martyrdom; five Protestant
bishops were amongst the sufferers. Happily her reign was a brief
one, lasting only five years; and they were for her years of domestic
misery, her marriage with the Spanish King, Philip II., being an
unhappy and unfruitful one.
Her half-sister Elizabeth, the issue of Henry’s marriage with Anne
Boleyn, succeeded to the throne in 1558. Elizabeth had been
brought up as a Protestant, had been kept a close prisoner during
Mary’s reign,—narrowly escaping being herself a martyr. And now to
maintain her claims to the throne, she had to depend upon her
Protestant subjects; for the Catholics denied the validity of her father
and mother’s marriage, and consequently denied her legitimacy and
right to reign. They asserted that Mary Stuart of Scotland was the
rightful heir, and as such entitled to their allegiance.
A brief explanation will show on what foundation the Stuart claim
—afterwards allowed at the death of Elizabeth in favour of Mary’s
son James—was based. At Bosworth Field, Richard III., of the house
of York, was defeated and slain. The victor was Richmond of
Lancaster, who thus became King Henry VII.; his son was Henry
VIII., and his daughter Margaret married James IV., King of
Scotland. The neighbouring Kings, James and Henry VIII., were thus
brothers-in-law; none the less did they quarrel and go to war with
each other, their hostilities ending, so far as James was concerned,
with the battle of Flodden. Henry was then engaged in a war with
France, and James was killed in the battle which his vanity had
provoked, and which he generalled so badly. His son, James V., was
Henry’s nephew, and full cousin to Henry’s children, Edward, Mary,
and Elizabeth. Thus, failing direct legitimate heirs to the English
throne, James’s daughter Mary was, in virtue of her descent as the
grand-daughter of Henry VII., the nearest heir.
At Elizabeth’s accession, in 1558, Mary was sixteen years of age.
As the wife of the Dauphin of France, the French monarchy put
forward her claims as the rightful sovereign of England, and even
had a coinage struck with her effigy thus designated. So Elizabeth
feared and hated Mary as her rival; hated her yet more, with a
woman’s spite, for her beauty and accomplishments. Soon Mary, by
his early death, lost her husband, then King of France, and at
nineteen years of age, in the splendour of her queenly beauty, she—
regretfully for the land of her youth—returned to her native
Scotland.
 MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND.
(From a painting by Zucchero.)

By her sweet presence, her courtesy, and winning manners, Mary

largely gained the hearts of her people; but murmurings soon arose
about her foreign ways, her foreign favouritisms, and her fidelity to
her Catholic faith. And a cloud gathered over her domestic life. She
had married a young nobleman, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. He was
next to Mary in the hereditary line of succession to the English
throne—as Mary was a grand-daughter of Margaret Tudor he was a
grandson—by Margaret’s second marriage with the Earl of Angus. He
was also a Catholic. Darnley seems to have been little other than a
handsome, but petulant, ill-behaved, and ill-mannered boy, fitted,
neither by intellect nor disposition, to be the husband and life-
companion of such a proud, clever, and accomplished woman as
Mary. Mary refused him the crown-matrimonial, and they very soon
fell apart. Mary was not forbidden to have her private chapel; an
Italian singer in this chapel, David Rizzio, became a favourite, he
acted as her secretary, and was admitted into the inner circle of
Holyrood. One evening the supper-party was broken in upon by
Darnley and a number of his associates, and Rizzio was dragged out
to the landing, and by several weapons barbarously stabbed to
death. Mary’s fair countenance and gentle voice were mated with an
iron will, persistent in carrying out her hatreds to the death. Darnley
was murdered by a rude villain, Earl Bothwell, and Mary has never
been satisfactorily cleared of complicity in the murder. Shortly
afterwards she married this Bothwell—by force, her apologists say.
We shall not even briefly go over the oft-told tale of Mary’s after-
life. As the incidents loom out of the tangled web, we feel, even
through the centuries, as if we would fain arrest them by a warning
voice, fain save that fascinating woman from her doom. We feel a
yearning pity, almost akin to love, although stern justice gives her
blame as a woman, a wife, and a Queen. That pitiful winter’s
morning in Fotheringay Castle, in 1587, brought to Mary, by the
headsman’s axe, a cruel death, but also a kind release from captivity
and unrest.
And what of her rival queen and kinswoman, “that bright
Occidental star,” Elizabeth? A woman with a strong masculine
intellect, of dauntless courage, one fitted to rule and govern, and
advance a nation. But unmistakably her father’s daughter, cruel,
heartless, unforgiving, and thoroughly false: with a woman’s caprice
exalting to supreme favouritism to-day, and striking down into the
dust to-morrow. She signed Mary’s death-warrant, and, by grimaces
and plainest hints, she made her people slay her own cousin. And
when the deed was irretrievably done she went into a hypocritical
paroxysm of well-acted anger and regret, and dealt round
punishment for the act which she herself had compassed. These two
women cited to the bar of judgment, Mary might well hide her face
for many sins and frailties; but the better actor would try to stand
up, boldly and unabashed. Our own hearts must answer which of
the two we justify, rather than the other.
 Old Edinburgh.

“Edina! Scotia’s darling seat!

All hail thy palaces and tow’rs,
Where once beneath a monarch’s feet
Sat legislation’s sov’reign powers!

There, watching high for war’s alarms,

Thy rough, rude fortress gleams afar;
Like some bold vet’ran grey in arms,
And marked with many a seamy scar.”

S o sang Burns, when “from marking wildflowers on the banks of

Ayr,” he “sheltered,” and was feted and petted in the “honoured
shade” of the capital of Scotland. And Sir Walter Scott, in describing
Marmion’s approach to the city on a summer’s morning, cannot,
from a full proud heart, refrain from introducing his own personality:
—

“Such dusky grandeur clothed the height

Where the huge castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Pil’d deep and massy, close and high—
Mine own romantic town!”

Doubtless, as a picturesque town, Edinburgh stands in the

foremost rank. The natural configuration of the ground in ridges and
hollows, and the commanding prospects from its heights of
undulating landscape, of broad Frith, of distant hills, and of the
adjacent Arthur’s Seat, like a couchant lion guarding the town, are
striking, and stir up any poetic feeling that may be lurking in the
heart. In the architecture there is a strange and incongruous
mingling of the modern and the antique, of the genuine and the
meretricious. There are many interesting historical memorials, and
very many reminders of the everyday present. Buildings and
monuments bring cherished and illustrious names to our mind; other
names are obtruded which we would gladly forget. But no one can,
from the Castle bastions, see the panorama of the city and its
surroundings, without intense interest, and an admiration which will
abide in the memory.
In 647, Edwin, the son of Ella, Saxon King of Northumbria,
extended his conquests beyond the Forth. He re-fortified the rock-
castle, called Puellerum, and to the little town which rose up around
it, was given the name of Edwinsburgh. In 1128, Edinburgh was
made a Royal burgh by David I. In 1215, a Parliament of Alexander
II. met here for the first time. In 1296, the title of the chief
magistrate was changed from Alderman to Provost.
In 1424, James I. was, at £40,000, ransomed from his long and
unjust imprisonment in England: the towns of Edinburgh, Aberdeen,
Perth, and Dundee, guaranteeing the ransom. James had, on his
parole, been free to move about England; and he soon saw how far
behind her his own land was in agriculture and commerce. To amend
this he made laws, which to us seem meddlesome and going into
petty details, but doubtless were then useful and progressive. For
the prevention of fires in buildings it was advisable to enact that
“hempe, lint and straw be not put in houses aboone or near fires,”
and that “nae licht be fetched from ane house to ane uther but
within covered weshel or lanterne.” The lofty piles of buildings for
which the older town of Edinburgh is now remarkable, were in the
fifteenth century represented by wooden houses not exceeding two
stories in height; for we find that in providing against fires,
Parliament ordained that “at the common cost aucht twenty-fute
ladders be made, and kept in a ready place in the town, for that use
and none other.” From the murder of James I. in Perth, in 1456,
Edinburgh dates as the capital, and where Parliaments were
exclusively held.
In 1496, in order to qualify the eldest sons of barons and
freeholders for exercising the functions of sheriffs (holding judicial
powers in a Scottish county) and ordinary justices, it was enacted
that such be sent to grammar schools, and there remain, “quhill they
be competentlie founded and have perfite Latin; and thereafter to
remain three zeirs at the schules of art and jure; so that they may
have knowledge and onderstanding of the laws.” The population of
Edinburgh was then about 8,000.
When, in 1503, Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., came to
Scotland as the bride of James IV., the King met her at Dalkeith, and
the royal lovers made their entry into Edinburgh, “the Kyng riding on
a pallafroy, with the princesse behind him, and so through the toun.”
Ten years later came, on the 10th September, the sad news of
Flodden, fought on the previous day; when the brave but fool-hardy
King, and the flower of Scottish manhood “were a’ wede away.” At
first it was consternation and the confusion of despair; but soon
order and new energy prevailed. Under pains of forfeiture of life and
goods, all citizens capable of bearing arms were convoked to form,
with the stragglers from Flodden, a fresh army: the older citizens
were to defend the city. The women were, under a threat of
banishment, forbidden to cry and clamour in the streets; the better
sort were to go to church and pray for their country; and thereafter
to mind their business at home, and not encumber the streets.
In 1543, under the regency of the Earl of Arran, an Act was
passed permitting the scriptures to be read in the vulgar tongue,
and the Reformation ideas began to be bruited about. Twelve years
later, statues in St. Giles’ Church, of the Virgin and certain saints
were destroyed; but the then Regent, Mary of Guise, by
threatenings, given strength to by her French troops, contrived to
keep down open revolt against the old faith. But in 1558, on the
festival day of St. Giles, the patron saint of Edinburgh, and for which
festival the priests and monks had made great preparation, it was
discovered that the image of the saint had been taken from the
church during the previous night, and thrown into the North Loch.
The priests got a smaller statue from the Greyfriars, this the people
called in derision “the bairn-saint.” The Queen-Regent was in the
procession. She must have been a woman of strong character; in
her presence all went smoothly, but having left, the populace tore
the little St. Giles to pieces, hustling and dispersing the priests.
From the death of the Queen-Regent, and the withdrawal of the
French troops in 1560, the Protestant cause was in the ascendancy.
An Act was passed denouncing Popery, and sanctioning the hastily
compiled Confession of Faith. Penalties on Catholic worship, very
similar to those under which Protestants had groaned, and which
they had bitterly denounced, were imposed. Any one celebrating
mass or being present at its celebration, was to be punished by
forfeiture of goods for the first offence, by banishment for the
second, and by death for the third. Queen Mary, then in France, and
her husband Francis, who held from Mary the crown-matrimonial of
Scotland, refused to ratify the Acts, and insulted the messenger of
the Parliament.
Next year, 1561, Mary, now a widow, and as such having lost her
high position at the French court, returned to Scotland. She waited
upon the deck of the vessel which was taking her from the land of
her youth, until its shores faded from her tear-dimmed eyes.
“Farewell, beloved France,” she sobbed, “I shall never behold thee
again.” When, on the first day of September, she made her public
entry into Edinburgh, never had the city shown such an exuberance
of warm enthusiasm. The procession included all the foremost
citizens, Protestant and Catholic, clad in velvet and satin; twelve
citizens supporting the canopy over the triumphal car, where, like an
Helen in her matchless loveliness, sat the young Queen. When on
the following Sunday she attended mass at Holyrood, her Catholic
servants were insulted, and the crowd could hardly be restrained
from interrupting the service. And so began the hurley-burley,
through six years little other than a civil war; a time of confusion, of
plotting and counter-plotting, of intolerance, of malice and revenge;
that fair figure with the dove’s eyes, but also with a determined will
and an unswerving purpose, ever emerging into the foreground, now
an object of admiration, and then for denunciation, but always for
the highest interest and the profoundest pity.
After Marys enforced abdication in Lochleven Castle, on 29th July,
1567, her year-old son James was proclaimed King. The Earl of
Morton, head of the powerful Douglas family, taking, in the child’s
name, the usual coronation oaths. Mary’s half-brother, the Earl of
Murray, became Regent. Three years later Murray, whilst riding in
State through Linlithgow, was shot dead in revenge for a private
injury. Then followed two years of discord and confusion from rival
factions; and then, 1572, Morton became Regent, and was the
master-power in the kingdom. For eight years he was the controlling
influence. He was haughty and revengeful, and at the same time
avaricious and corrupt; so he made many enemies, and these
plotted his destruction. One day when the King, now fourteen years
of age, was sitting in Council, one of James’s favourites entered the
chamber abruptly, fell on his knees before the King, and accused
Morton of having been concerned in the murder of the King’s father,
Lord Darnley. Morton replied that instead of having been in the plot,
he had himself been most active in dragging to light and punishing
the conspirators. He now demanded a fair trial; but fair trials were
not then general. Morton’s servants were put to the torture to extort
damnatory evidence, and several known enemies were on the jury;
so he was found guilty of having been “art and part” in Darnley’s
murder. To the last he denied having advised or aided in the foul
deed; but it is probable that he knew that it was in purpose. He
suffered death by decapitation at Edinburgh, in June, 1581, the
instrument of death being a rough form of guillotine, called the
Maiden, which, it is said, he introduced into Scotland from Yorkshire.
The gruesome machine is now in the Edinburgh Antiquarian
Museum.
 THE SCOTTISH MAIDEN.

In 1596, James, now thirty years of age, quarrelled with his

capital. There was in all the Stuart kings a strong strain of the old
faith in what hearts they had; or, there was at least a very strong
dislike of the independent, self-assertive idea which was the basis of
the Presbyterian Church. James granted certain favours, which we
should now think simply common rights, to his Catholic nobles, and
this roused the ire of the Kirk, then ever ready to testify against
popery, to assert for itself the right of free judgment in religious
matters, but practically to deny this right to others. A standing
Council of the Church was formed out of Edinburgh and provincial
Presbyteries; inflammatory sermons were preached, and the King,
refusing to receive a petition demanding that the laws against
papacy be stringently enforced, was mobbed, and seditious cries
were raised.
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