J H Merle d’Aubigné
Everything was proceeding well in Scotland. The Regent, the Earl of Arran, was as much respected as any king could have been. All were promising themselves a quiet life when a sudden gust upset everything. One party was full of wrath at the recent changes. The alliance of Scotland with England, the imprisonment of Cardinal Beaton, the regency of Arran, the freedom to read the Scriptures – all these things filled the friends of the papacy with horror, whether at Rome, in France or in Scotland. The Earl of Lennox had arrived from Paris to give his support to the French party in Scotland. The Pope had also sent Marco Grimani as a legate, with orders to join the Cardinal, Lennox and all Arran’s other adversaries and use every means he could devise to bring down the Regent and elevate the Cardinal.
Two Scottish priests, who had lived for a long time in France and had become imbued with Roman Catholicism of the deepest dye, landed in Scotland soon afterwards, in April 1543. These men were likely to do more than all others to help restore Rome’s full power. They were John Hamilton, Abbot of Paisley and an illegitimate brother of the Regent; and David Panter, afterwards Bishop of Ross. Yet their learning, their lowliness and their religion were much talked of, and people thought their coming would prove a great comfort to the Church of God. “They will soon,” it was said, “go into the pulpit and truly preach Jesus Christ.”
The Abbot of Paisley could visit his brother the Regent at any time and he undertook to break down, bit by bit, Arran’s evangelical views and to sunder his connection with England. First of all, it was necessary to get rid
8Quoted in Gospel and Church, p 101.
1Abridged from The History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, vol 6. Last month’s chapter described how the Scots were given the freedom to read the Scriptures.
of Williams and Rough, the two evangelical chaplains. The two priests therefore began at once to disparage their preaching. The Abbot of Paisley had always some fault to find. “Their sermons,” he told his brother, “are heretical and scandalous.” The latter, lacking strength of character, allowed himself to be influenced. Williams was ordered to stop preaching and he set out for England. Rough was sent to preach in Kyle, in Ayrshire, where for some time there had been lovers of the Bible.
This was not enough. The men of sound judgement and genuine piety who were about the Regent, and had contributed to the general prosperity and peace, must also be removed. Some were got rid of by crafty expedients, others by false insinuations. And they were warned that their life was at stake. At the same time the partisans of the clergy, who had till then kept aloof from the court, winged their way there like ravens to the carrion. One day there was a great gathering at Holyrood Palace; the Regent saw around him both faithful attendants who had served their country well and others who were fanatical supporters of the Cardinal; one of the latter cried out in a voice loud enough for Arran and all present to hear: “My Lord Governor and his friends will never be at ease nor quietness till a dozen of these knaves that abuse his grace be hanged”. After that, people saw the men whose labours had been so useful to Scotland – Durham, Borthwick, Bothwell, the laird of Grange, Balnaves, Ballanden and Sir David Lyndsay – withdraw from the court, while he who had threatened them with the gallows was rewarded.
The Cardinal was set at liberty, at the request, especially, of the Queen Mother, who had never ceased to intercede for him. Once free, this arrogant man thought only of recovering his own power and of re-establishing the cause of the papacy. He tried all imaginable schemes to win the multitude. When he thought he had at last secured his position, he convoked the clergy at St Andrews and unfolded to them all the dangers then hanging over Scotland. “In order to avert them,” he said, “contribute generously from your purses, and urge all your friends to do the same. Tell them that their property and their lives are at stake. Nay, more than that,” he exclaimed “our task is to prevent the ruin which is threatening the universal Church of the Pope.” The clergy declared that they would place all their resources at his disposal, and determined to set on foot a general subscription.
Some of the lords talked without reserve, among themselves and with the Queen Mother, of deposing the Regent, on the ground of disobedience to their holy mother the Church. This greatly alarmed Arran; and his brother, the abbot of Paisley, told him: “Consider the danger to which you expose yourself by allowing the authority of the Pope to be impaired. It is the author-
ity on which your own rests.” As Arran dreaded the anger of Henry VIII, the Abbot emphasised the power of the King of France and the great advantages of an alliance with him. But above everything else he insisted on the obligation of making peace with the Church, “out of whose pale,” he repeated, “there is no salvation”. The poor Regent, weak and inconstant, and not at all grounded in the faith of the gospel, wavered between the Pope and the gospel, between France and England.
Beaten on all sides by contending waves; conscious that his forces were inferior; hemmed in by the snares of the Cardinal, who chose rather to gain him by terror than to subdue him by arms; abandoned by many of the nobles; no longer in favour with the people, who were offended by his weakness, the unhappy man at last took the fatal leap. On September 3 Arran secretly stole away to Stirling and threw himself into the arms of his cousin the Cardinal.
This was not all. He was resolved also to throw himself into the arms of the Pope; desirous only of doing so without too much ostentation. For this purpose, a chapel in the convent of the Franciscans was chosen. There in the dim light, that weak man – to whom people had been looking for the triumph of the Reformation in Scotland – knelt down before the altar, humbly confessed his errors, trampled under foot the oaths which he had taken to his own country and to England, renounced the evangelical profession of Jesus Christ, submitted to the Pope and received absolution from the Cardinal. The wretched man continued indeed to be regent in name, but from that hour he possessed no real authority, for the Cardinal was his governor. He therefore fell into contempt, for “whosoever will save his life shall lose it”.
The alliance between Scotland and France was renewed and fresh promises made to Francis I. The Cardinal thus brilliantly opened his reign and, by placing the crown on the head of the young Mary, he told himself that at least he had no need to fear that the child would take it into her head to thwart his schemes. Henry VIII was in consternation. He recalled his ambassador and declared war on Scotland, with all its horrors of fire and sword.
One other man stood in the Cardinal’s way, the Earl of Lennox. At the suggestion of the Cardinal, the Queen Mother requested the King of France to recall Lennox on any specious pretext. Seeing that he had lost the favour of France, he offered his services to the King of England, who eagerly accepted them. Lennox was then looked on as the head of Scottish Protestantism. Evangelical religion had not lost much in losing Arran; neither had it gained more by acquiring Lennox. These men were only moved by political interests, and Scottish Protestantism, more than any other, was to reject these shameful combinations of Christ and Baal; it was to have one king alone, Jesus Christ.
The Cardinal, thus victorious, set himself immediately to the work which
he had most at heart – to crush the Reformation. The law which authorised the reading of Holy Scripture had its fruit, and “in sundry parts of Scotland”, says a chronicler, “thereby were opened the eyes of the elect of God to see the truth and abhor the abominations”. This abhorrence might possibly drive them to excess. At Perth some friends of the Reformation, endowed for the most part with genuine piety, held meetings, read the Scriptures together and searched out their meaning. They had also at times simple social meals together. Certain priests of the town, with whom they were connected and whose character they esteemed, without sharing their opinions, were invited to these gatherings. The churchmen ate, drank and talked with them, and thought themselves fortunate to be invited to these honest men’s houses. But these Christian folk of Perth did not tie themselves down to the Roman rules about meat days and fish days, rules from which exemption may be had for a little money, and one Friday a goose happened to appear on their table.
Three of them, Robert Lamb, William Anderson and James Raveleson, daring characters given to ridicule, were among those who were taken up with the negative side of reform. They were disgusted at the abuses of monastic life, and the Franciscans offended them most of all. The sight of one of these mendicant friars in the street, with his brown robe, his girdle of cord and his bare feet, excited in them the keenest aversion. A distinguished priest has admitted that monks “often outdo men of the world in luxurious indulgence”; yet these monks pretend that all that is needed for salvation is to put on the robe of their order at the moment of death. In the judgement of Anderson and his two friends, the founder of that order – who was however a better man than most of his successors – must have been the devil himself. They therefore took an image of Francis of Assisi, nailed rams’ horns on the head and hung a cow’s tail behind, and gave to it the semblance of a demon.
Among these Reformed Christians of Perth there were some manifestations of opinion characterised by simplicity and decision, which occasionally took a strange shape. One of the women who frequented the evangelical meetings, Hellen Stirke, was near her confinement. In her hour of labour, surrounded by female friends and neighbours, all of them fervent worshippers of the Virgin Mary, she called on God alone in the name of Jesus Christ. The women said to her: “You ought to call upon the Virgin. Is not Mary immaculate as Christ is, and even above Him as first source of redemption? Is she not the queen of heaven, the head of the Church?” The Franciscan friars were continually impressing on the minds of these women the notion that no one could obtain a blessing from God “except by the dispensation of His pious mother”.
Hellen revered Mary as a holy and blessed woman, but she held her to be of the same nature as other women and she told her neighbours so. It was of
His mercy, as Mary herself said, that God had looked upon the low estate of His servant. That her friends might better understand her meaning, she boldly added, “If I had lived in the days of the Virgin, God might have looked likewise to my humility and base estate as He did to the Virgin’s, and might have made me the mother of Christ”. The women about her could not believe their ears, and her words, reported in the town by her neighbours, were counted execrable by the clergy and the multitude.
If Francis was Anderson’s nightmare, the Pope was Raveleson’s. But the latter gave expression to his sentiments in a less insulting fashion. When he had built a house of four stories, he placed at the top of his staircase, by way of ornament, the triple diadem of the pope, carved in wood. This was not a very criminal act, but he paid dearly for it.
However, others among these Perth Protestants were free from these eccentricities, while displaying no less courage. On one occasion, when a monk named Spence very loudly asserted in the church that “prayer made to saints is so necessary that without it there could be no hope of salvation to man”, Robert Lamb rose and accused him before the whole assembly of teaching false doctrines. “In the name of God,” he said, “I adjure you to speak the truth.” The friar, stricken with fear, promised to do so; but there was so much tumult in the church that the monk could not make himself heard, and Robert barely escaped the violence of the people. The women, above all, screamed and urged the multitude on to the cruelest of actions.
In January 1544 the Cardinal, seeing that his authority was firmly established, thought that the time had come for suppressing the Reformation and glorifying the Pope. Having heard what was going on, he set out for Perth, taking with him the Regent, some of the chief lords, bishops and judges. When he arrived, he ordered Robert Lamb, William Anderson, James Hunter, James Raveleson, James Finlason and his wife Hellen Stirke to be imprisoned the same evening. On the following morning the prisoners appeared before their judge. They were particularly accused of having met together to hear the Scriptures read. A special charge was made against Lamb of having interrupted a friar. “It is the duty of no man”, he answered, “who understands and knows the truth to hear the same impugned without contradiction. There are sundry here present in judgement who, while they know what is true, are consenting to what is false; but they will have to bear the burden in God’s presence.”
The six prisoners were condemned to death and cruelly treated. Many of the inhabitants of Perth appealed to the Regent to save their lives. But when Arran spoke a word to the Cardinal in their behalf, the latter replied, “If you refuse to take part in the execution of this sentence, I will depose you”. Arran
trembled and held his peace. The friends of the victims then remembered that certain priests in the town had frequently sat at the tables of the accused and entreated them to intercede with the Cardinal on their behalf. But these poor priests were terrified that the Cardinal might hear of their former relations with the condemned and answered that they would much rather see them dead than alive.
Agitation was increasing in the town. The Cardinal had a great band of armed men ready to conduct the victims to the place of execution. Robert Lamb, standing at the foot of the gallows, said to the people: “Fear God and forsake the Pope”. Then he stated that calamity would soon fall on the Cardinal. The five Christians comforted one another with the hope that they would sup together in the kingdom of heaven that night.
Hellen desired earnestly to die with her husband, but this was not permitted her. At the moment of their parting she gave him a kiss and said, “Husband, rejoice, for we have lived together many joyful days; but this day in which we must die ought to be most joyful unto us both, because we must have joy for ever. Therefore I will not bid you good night, for we shall suddenly meet with joy in the kingdom of heaven.” She was then taken to a pond to be drowned. She was holding her infant in her arms and giving it suck for the last time. But this pathetic incident did not touch the pitiless hearts of her executioners. She had entreated her neighbours to take care of her children. She took the “sucking bairn” from her breast and gave it to the nurse. She was then flung into the water. The Cardinal was satisfied.
From Perth he passed into Angus, dragging along with him the unhappy Regent. Many inhabitants of that region appeared before him for the hateful crime of reading the New Testament. Among them was a Dominican named John Rogers, a man of piety and learning, who had led many souls into peace by preaching Christ in Angus. He was confined with others in the Castle of St Andrews, and a few days later his dead body was found at the foot of the walls. It was very generally believed that the Cardinal had ordered him to be put to death in his dungeon and to be thrown over the walls. A report was then circulated that the prisoner, in attempting to escape, had fallen on the rocks and been killed. A considerable number of Scots, among them Sir Henry Elder, John Elder, Walter Piper and Lawrence Pullar, were banished, merely on suspicion of having read the Gospel.
The Cardinal now returned to Edinburgh, perfectly satisfied with his campaign and meditating fresh exploits of the same kind, when a fleet appeared on the sea. “It is the English,” said most people, “and it is greatly to be feared that they will land.” The Cardinal smiled and jested, went to his dinner table and talked with everyone as though no danger threatened. Great crowds assem-
bled to gaze on the vessels. At daybreak, Lord Lisle, who was in command of the fleet, ordered his armed men to be put ashore. By 10 o’clock the operation was completed, and 10 000 armed men had landed. The Cardinal and the Regent, dropping their false show of calmness, appeared very much alarmed and fled in a carriage as fast as their horses could take them. Edinburgh was first pillaged and then burnt. Then the English carried off their plunder to the ships. Henry VIII had entertained vast projects for Scotland, but he contented himself with the chastisement inflicted on the capital.