3. Progress and Regress
D Hay Fleming
A month before the Scottish Parliament sanctioned the use of a vernacular version of the Bible, Lord Lisle, the Warden of the English Marches, advised the Regent Arran to let slip among the people “the Bible and New Testament in English” and offered, if he had none in his own tongue [Scots], to help to get some out of England. To which Arran replied, “As for the Bible, there is none to be got in our [common] tongue in this realm, wherefore it will please you to cause an Englishman come here with certain of them, who shall have a sure passport . . . to sell them to inhabitants of this realm”.
A few days later, Sir Ralph Sadler, the English ambassador to Scotland, reported that the English Bible,2 New Testament, Primer, and Psalter were “marvellously desired now of the people in Scotland”; and that “if there were a cartload sent thither, they would be bought every one”. This was on February 27, but the Bibles were not sent immediately, for on April 1, fully a fortnight after the Act of Parliament was passed, Arran asked Sadler to write to England for some New Testaments and Bibles in English.
Curiously enough, it was at the very time when the Scottish Parliament sanctioned the reading of the Scriptures in English and Scots that Henry VIII and the English Parliament passed a retrograde Act. It not only forbade printers and booksellers to issue Tyndale’s translations of the books of the Bible, but it forbade the reading of the Bible in English in churches; it also forbade women and various classes of men, such as apprentices and labourers to read the New Testament in English. Those known in Scotland as “Pharisees and Papists” were “well pleased with the restraint of the Scripture made in England from certain degrees of the people, and yet would have liked it much better if it had been generally restrained from all sorts.” On the other hand, those who valued God’s Word were “much offended”.
Arran appointed Thomas Guylliame,3 a friar, to preach in spite of a papal
1Another part of a chapter, “Primary Causes – the Word of God”, in Hay Fleming’s The Reformation in Scotland: Causes, Characteristics, Consequences (1910). It has been edited. The title of last month’s extract was “Parliament and Legalising the Reading of the Bible”. The author was a noted church historian, writing from a Reformed standpoint.
2The Bible, as distinct from the New Testament, was the Old Testament.
3John Knox describes Guylliame (in an earlier chapter of The Reformation in Scotland, p 204) “as a man of solid judgement, of reasonable letters for that age, a prompt and good speaker, whose doctrine was wholesome, but without great vehemency against superstition”. Fleming goes on to state, “Guylliame was the first man from whom [Knox] received any taste of the truth”.
interdict, and he made it lawful “to every man to have the Bible in English”. These were regarded by Bishop Lesley as “the first alteration of religion” in Scotland. They were indeed the first steps of the civil authority in favour of the Reformation, and they were fruitful of good results.
When, in September 1538, James V wrote for the third time to the Pope, urging him to make David Beaton a cardinal, he did so as one pressed with anxious thoughts concerning the ecclesiastical order as well as the faith. He was especially concerned, as he viewed the enemy as sowing tares, not merely in a neighbouring field but in the nearest furrows; and he asked the Pope to consider how much easier it was to maintain a standing Church than to raise one that was fallen.
During the preceding 11 years, five heretics had suffered the extreme penalty of the law in Scotland; and before long James was to see the obnoxious seed thriving so well in his own furrows that his Parliament (14 March 1541) enjoined that the Virgin Mary be worshipped and honoured and invoked; that no one should question the Pope’s authority under pain of death; that no one should favour heretics; that fugitive heretics should be banished and condemned; that those who informed against conventicles of heretics should be rewarded; and that no one should cast down the images of the saints or treat them with dishonour or irreverence.
From the standpoint of Rome this legislation looked rather ominous; yet, since David Beaton’s elevation, eight other Scottish Protestants had suffered martyrdom. But now that the Bible was free, even though discussion of it was prohibited, the progress of heresy was, from the Roman standpoint, much more alarming.
It had been “heavily murmured to the Governor that sundry persons are Sacramentaries, holding disputations on the effect and essence of the sacraments, tending plainly to “the enervation of the faith Catholic”. So the Privy Council, on 2 June 1543, ordained that “no man dispute or maintain opinions of the sacraments, or of the effect or essence thereof, otherwise than is received by the Holy Kirk, under the pain of loss of life, lands and goods”. It was also ordained that daily inquisition should be made for all such persons, and when apprehended they were to be brought to the civil magistrates, by whom they were to be securely kept until the mind of the Governor and lords of Council was known regarding them. This Act of Council closed with the suggestive words: “Providing always that this Act be not prejudicial to the prelates and kirkmen anent their jurisdiction to take inquisition of all heretics as they have done in times bygone, in conformity to the common law”.
In the following September, the Governor was openly reconciled to the Cardinal, acknowledged his offence, submitted to penance, was absolved,
heard mass and received the sacrament. In the oldest manuscript of Knox’s History, the Governor’s conduct is summed up very briefly, in a marginal note, believed to be in Knox’s own handwriting: “The Governor violated his faith, refused God, and took absolution of the devil”. On December 15, the Governor caused Parliament to be informed “that heretics more and more rise and spread within this realm, sowing damnable opinions contrary to the faith and laws of Holy Kirk, acts and constitutions of this realm”. Therefore all prelates, each one within his own jurisdiction, were exhorted to inquire concerning all such persons and to proceed against them “according to the laws of Holy Kirk”. And Arran promised to be ready at all times to do in this matter what related to his office. So, exactly nine months after permission had been given to read the Scriptures in the common tongue, Parliament was officially informed that there ought to be another campaign against heretics.
That Arran’s assurance of personal help was no idle promise was shown the next month, for it was when he then accompanied the Cardinal to Perth to inaugurate the campaign that five of the heretics there were put to death. Four of them were men and were convicted of holding a convention in St Ann’s Chapel, in which they conferred and disputed on Holy Scripture; two of them were also convicted of having interrupted a friar when he was preaching, alleging that his doctrine was false and contrary to Scripture. The woman was convicted of dishonouring the Virgin Mary; in childbirth she had refused to invoke the Virgin’s help. A number of Protestants were at this time banished, or rather fled.