2. Parliament and Legalising the Reading of the Bible
D Hay Fleming
Two months after the death of James V, the Regent Arran alleged that in the past whatever had been decreed by the clergy in their blindness, for
1Another part of a chapter in Hay Fleming’s The Reformation in Scotland: Causes, Characteristics, Consequences (1910). It has been edited. The original title of the chapter was: “Primary Causes – the Word of God”; the title of last month’s extract was “Opposition to the Bible in English”. The author was a noted church historian, writing from a Reformed standpoint.
“stopping of God’s Holy Word”, had been put in force by the King’s authority. And in the epistle to James VI, prefixed to an edition of the Bible and written in the name of the General Assembly of the Church, and dated 10 July 1579, it is stated that the clergy of the realm, abusing the gentle nature of James V, made it a capital crime “to be punished with the fire”, to have or read the New Testament in the common language. Yea, and to make its readers to all men more odious, as if it had been “the detestable name of a pernicious sect, they were named New Testamentaries”.
Sir James Melville relates that, when the clerical and other enemies of James Kirkcaldy of Grange wished to prejudice the King against him, they alleged, among other things, that he had “become a heretic, and that he always had a New Testament in English in his pouch”. And one of the charges on which Cardinal Beaton condemned Sir John Borthwick in 1540 was that he had the New Testament in English.
When the Vicar of Dollar was at the stake, someone, says David Calderwood2, plucked the New Testament out of his bosom, and, holding it up before the people, cried, “Heresy! Heresy!” Then the people cried, “Burn him! Burn him!” As told by another writer, it was not at the vicar’s martyrdom, but at his trial, that the accuser pulled the book out of his sleeve and, holding it up to the people, said, “See the heretic; he has the book hidden in his sleeve”. Either version of the incident illustrates well enough the hostile feeling which benighted Papists entertained towards the Bible in English. From their own standpoint they judged rightly, for the Word of God was the root cause of the Reformation, and from it were derived the necessary sap and strength.
Even those prelates who did so little to spread a knowledge of the New Testament did not object to paying external honour to it. When Cardinal Beaton condemned Sir John Borthwick for having that Testament in English, he had the Holy Gospels placed before him in pronouncing sentence, so that the judgement might seem to proceed from the face of God. And at his consecration, the Gospels were laid upon his shoulders; or, if Sir David Lyndsay correctly describes the Scottish custom, both the Old Testament and the New were bound upon his back.
The opposition of such men as the Cardinal to the circulation of the Scriptures in English was, no doubt, chiefly due to the fear that so-called heresy would thereby be encouraged, that the position of the Church would be weakened, and that the clergy themselves would lose their power and influence. It is not at all uncharitable to attribute selfish, personal motives to those men. Had they been self-denying, self-sacrificing zealots, their
2Scottish minister, church historian and writer against Episcopacy; lived from 1575 to 1650.
opposition to the Reformation, and their cruel and pitiless treatment of the Reformers, might have been explained and palliated on the ground that, in excommunicating and killing better people than themselves, they thought that they were doing God service. But such an explanation cannot be suggested on behalf of men who sacrificed all the weightier matters of the law on the altar of self-indulgence.
Opposition, however, to the Scriptures in the common tongue was, as Cochlaeus had shown, neither new nor local. Before the middle of the thirteenth century, the councils of Toulouse and Tarragona “forbade the laity to read the vernacular translations of the Bible”. Henry Knighton, a canon of the abbey at Leicester and a contemporary of Wycliff, thus expatiates on the consequences of giving the Bible to the people in their own tongue:
“The gospel – which Christ gave to the clerics and doctors of the Church, that they might sweetly minister it to the laity and those of weaker capacity, according to the necessity of the time and the need of the persons . . . this Master John Wycliff translated from Latin into the English tongue. Through him it has become a common thing and more open to laymen and women who are able to read than it is wont to be to clerics more than ordinarily learned and of superior intelligence. And so the pearl of the gospel is thrown out and trampled on by the swine; and so that which is wont to be dear to clergy and laity is now made as it were the common sport of both, and the precious stone of the clergy is turned into the plaything of the laity.”
That there was a demand for Bibles, even in the Church of Rome, is proved by the fact that so many editions of the Latin Vulgate were printed before the year 1500. These, of course, were of no use to people who could read only their mother tongue. But that Church was loath to produce translations. In the second half of the sixteenth century, “Pius IV required the bishops to refuse lay persons leave to read even Roman Catholic versions of Scripture unless their confessors or parish priests judged that such reading was likely to prove beneficial”. The objections therefore of this infallible earthly head of the Church, like those of Cochlaeus, were not confined to heretical translations. Not until 1582 did Roman Catholics produce a printed English translation of the New Testament, and not until 1609-10 one of the Old Testament. The New Testament was translated and printed at Rheims, the Old at Douay.
In the words of the late Lord Bute, “The version, or rather series of versions – for there are many different editions of the texts generally called the Douay Bible, does not much commend itself to the English ear. It is indeed, specially in the earlier editions, difficult to understand for anyone who does not know Latin, and indeed other languages also. Moreover, none of the
editions possesses that ecclesiastical authority which is enjoyed, for instance, by the Italian version of Archbishop Martini in Italy.”
The unreformed Church in Scotland could not be expected to approve of the circulation of the Bible in English, when it was afraid to put its own Catechism – Archbishop Hamilton’s – freely into the hands of the laity. Rectors, vicars and curates were forbidden “to lend their copies to every layman indiscriminately, but only according to the decision, advice and discretion of their bishop”. And even for the bishops it was only “lawful to lend copies of the said Catechism to some few laymen worthy, grave, of good faith and prudent, and chiefly to those who shall seem to desire them for the sake rather of instruction than of any kind of curiosity”.
It does not appear that the Scottish Parliament had ever explicitly prohibited the English Scriptures. Hence in Regent Arran’s first Parliament, it was proposed that it should be lawful to all citizens to have the New Testament and the Old in the common tongue, “in English or Scots, of a good and true translation, and that they shall incur no crimes for having or reading it”. The Lords of the Articles considered the proposal and found it reasonable, “and therefore . . . it may be used among all the citizens of this realm in our common tongue of a good, true and just translation, because there was no law shown or produced to the contrary”. This was on 15 March 1543.
Cardinal Beaton was then in custody; but Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow, for himself and 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 and concluded whether it was necessary or not that the Scriptures should be “used among the Queen’s subjects” in the common tongue. Those who argued on behalf of the Church were driven to admit that the Scriptures might be read in the common tongue provided the 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!
The attendance in the Parliament of Scotland in March 1543 was much above the average. With the exception of the meeting in December 1540, it was numerically greater than it had been for many years. It not only legalised the reading of the Scriptures in English, but also slightly modified two Acts of James V against heretics. The Parliament, however, was very conservative, for, although it declared that the people should not incur any penalty for possessing or reading the Bible in their own tongue, the stipulation suggested in the draft Act was adopted, that no person should dispute, argue, or maintain opinions on this matter. Arran ordered the Act to be proclaimed at the market cross of Edinburgh on March 19; and Sadler, writing from Edinburgh next day, says that the proclamation had been made that it was lawful “to all men
to read the Bible and Testament3 in the mother tongue” and ordered that “none preach to the contrary upon pain of death”.
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 carried about in many men’s hands. We grant that some (alas!) profaned that blessed Word; for some that, perhaps, had never read ten sentences in it, had it most commonly in their hand; they would chop their familiars on the cheek with it and say, This has lain hidden under the foot of my bed these ten years. Others would glory, O how often 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 by many to [curry favour] thereby; for every man esteemed the Governor 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.”