D Hay Fleming
The Scottish Parliament does not appear ever to have explicitly prohibited the Scriptures in the vernacular. Hence in March 1543, in Regent Arran’s first Parliament – when it was proposed that it should be lawful to all to have the New Testament and the Old, “in the vulgar [common] tongue, in English or Scots” – the Lords of the Articles, a parliamentary committee, concluded that “there was no law shown nor produced to the contrary”. But Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow, on behalf of all the prelates in Parliament, dissented against the Act, and intimated their opposition until a provincial council of all the clergy of the realm had advised on whether it was necessary that the Scriptures should “be had in vulgar tongue to be used among the Queen’s subjects”. Those who argued on behalf of the Church were driven to admit that the Scriptures might be read in the vulgar tongue provided the
1The final, edited, extract in this series from Fleming’s The Reformation in Scotland. Last month’s article described the opposition of the Roman Church to the circulation of the Scriptures in the common language.
translation was true. When pressed to point out errors in the English translation, they could only reply that love was put in place of charity.
In mentioning the results of the Act, Knox says, “Then might have been seen the Bible lying almost upon every gentleman’s table. The New Testament was borne about in many men’s hands. We grant that some (alas!) profaned that blessed Word; for some that, perchance, had never read ten sentences in it, had it most commonly in their hand . . . and would say, ‘This has lain hid under my bed these ten years’. Others would glory, ‘O how oft have I been in danger for this book; how secretly have I stolen away from my wife at midnight to read upon it’. And this was done of many to make court [to court favour] thereby; for all man esteemed the Governor [the Regent Arran] to have been the most fervent Protestant that was in Europe. Although we say that many abused that liberty granted of God miraculously, yet thereby did the knowledge of God wondrously increase, and God gave His Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance.”
A month before the Scottish Parliament sanctioned the use of a vernacular version, Lord Lisle, the Warden of the English Marches, advised Regent Arran to circulate the Scriptures among the people and offered to help get some from England if he had none in his own tongue. To which Arran replied, “As for the Bible, there is none to be got in our vulgar tongue in this realm, wherefore it will please you to cause an Englishman [to] come here with certain of them, which shall have a sure passport and [be] well treated, to sell them to inhabitants of this realm”. And a few days later it was reported that the English Bible, New Testament, and Psalter “be marvellously desired now of the people in Scotland”; and that “if there were a cart load sent thither, they would be bought every one”. But they were not sent immediately, for fully a fortnight after the Act of Parliament was passed, Arran asked the English ambassador to write for copies of the Scriptures in English.
Curiously enough, at the very time when the Scottish Parliament sanctioned the reading of the Scriptures in English or Scots, Henry and the English Parliament passed a retrograde Act. It forbade printers and booksellers to issue Tyndale’s translations of the Old or New Testament, the reading of the Bible in English in churches, and it also forbade women, and men of the lower classes, to read the New Testament in English. Those known in Scotland as “Pharisees and Papists” would have liked it much better if the Bible “had been generally restrained from all sorts”. On the other hand, those who loved God’s Word were “much offended” with the Act.
Arran’s appointment of Guillaume to preach against the Pope’s authority and his making it lawful “to every man to have the Bible in English,” were regarded by John Lesley, a Roman Catholic historian, 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, especially as the enemy was 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, in March 1541, enjoined that the Virgin Mary should be worshipped and honoured and invoked; that no one should impugn 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 it looked ominous that this legislation was deemed necessary. Since David Beaton became cardinal, eight other Scottish Protestants had suffered martyrdom. But now that the Bible was free, even though discussion was prohibited, the progress of heresy was, for Rome, much more alarming.
Because it had been “heavily murmured” to the Governor that various people in Scotland were holding disputations on the effect and essence of the sacraments, tending plainly to “the enervation of the Catholic faith”, the Privy Council ordained in June 1543 that “no man dispute or maintain any opinions of the sacraments, nor of the effect or essence thereof, other ways 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 begone”.
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”. In December, 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,” and therefore all prelates were exhorted to inquire concerning all such persons, and to proceed against them “according to the laws of Holy Kirk”. And it was promised that the Governor “shall be ready at all times to do therein” according to his office. So, exactly nine months after permission had been given to read the Scriptures in the vernacular, Parliament was officially informed that there ought to be another campaign against heretics.
It was shown next month that Arran’s assurance of personal help was no idle promise; he accompanied the Cardinal to Perth, and five heretics were put to death. The four men were convicted of meeting in St Ann’s Chapel, when 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 her help; she had said that, if she had lived at that time, “God might have looked to her humility and low estate, as he did to the Virgin’s, in making her the mother of Christ”. A number of Protestants at this time fled the country.
When Henry VIII authorised translations of the Scriptures, “those who maintained the old Lollard theory – that the Bible could be safely interpreted without the aid of a priesthood – were encouraged in their opposition to the Church. This theory was clearly gaining in strength during the latter part of Henry’s reign, and its adherents became still more numerous in that of his son. Men founded their convictions on an infallible book, were confident in their own judgements, and died by hundreds under Mary for beliefs that were only exceptionally held in the beginning of her father’s reign. The pure delight in the sacred literature itself inspired many with enthusiasm.”2
The Word of God exerted a marvellous power in Scotland also, even over many who were personally unable to read it. The keenness of some of these illiterates was exemplified in Robert Maule of Panmure, who became “very penitent of his former life and embraced the Reformed religion”. He died in May 1560 aged 62. He had never been taught to read or write, but one of his sons, “a godly person given to reading of the Scripture”, instructed him each night in “the chief points of religion”.
While Quintin Kennedy, Abbot of Crossraguel in Ayrshire, admitted in 1558 that it was expedient that those should read the Scriptures who did so “temperately”, he contended that God had provided a better way than burdening every private man to read His Word in order to find out all its
2David Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland, vol 1, pp 172-4.
secrets necessary for salvation. Private men ought not to pry into such mysteries as “the sacraments, predestination, free will and justification”. They should not, he argued, seek any other understanding of these than that already taught by general councils. In all such matters above their knowledge, the people should support the judgement of their pastors, “without curious reasoning”.
It was necessary to lean on “the judgement of the Kirk in all matters concerning both faith and religion”, for there were things which faithful Christians ought to believe, although “they cannot be proven by express testimonies of Scripture”. For example, “Is he not to be esteemed as a heretic who would deny the blessed mother of Jesus Christ our Saviour to be a perpetual virgin?” Although the authority of the Church extended to more than was expressly contained in Scripture, yet “the Scripture and Kirk are both alike true, equal of strength, power and dignity, governed ever with the same Spirit of God”.
This doctrine might continue to hold the field at Rome; it was rapidly ceasing to do so in Scotland. There, in that year of Walter Mill’s martyrdom, the ultimate triumph of the Reformed doctrines was already assured to the eye of faith. To the Parliament which met in November, the Protestants formally protested that, as they had not been able to obtain a “just reformation according to God’s Word”, it should be lawful for them to act in matters of religion and conscience as they must answer to God, until their adversaries proved themselves to be true ministers of Christ’s Church and purged themselves of the crimes laid to their charge.
On the following January 1, the notice known as The Beggars’ Summons was posted on the gates of the friaries. It made no attack on the shameless immorality of the ecclesiastical “beggars and vagabonds”, but vigorously denounced the feigned holiness and selfish craftiness by which the friars, though sturdy, had acquired the alms which ought to have been given to the diseased and feeble poor. In it the friars were warned, in the name of God, to quit the hospitals before Whitsun next, so that possession might be taken by the only lawful owners – the blind, crooked, bedridden, widows, orphans and other poor unable to work. These wretched poor intimated that, failing compliance with their demands, they would, with God’s help and the assistance of His saints on earth, take possession of their patrimony at Whitsun and eject the friars. But the provincial council, which met in March, failed to deal with the pressing matters of doctrine and ritual, and held out no hope of toleration to those who wished to be ruled by the Bible.
When Knox returned to Scotland on 2 May 1559, the realm was in the very throes of the Reformation. He found the thirst for the gospel to be wondrously great. By the beginning of September, though troubled with
fever, he had travelled through most of the country and found men of all sorts embracing the truth. A few weeks later he was still so engrossed that he could not get four hours out of the 24 for natural rest. The French held Dunbar and Leith and were strong enough to be aggressive, but for the body of the Scottish people, the battle of the Reformation was won.