gospel of Christ and his congregation, ought, according to our bounden duty, to strive, in our master’s cause, even unto the death, being certain of the victory in him. We do therefore promise, before the majesty of God and his congregation, that we, by his grace, shall with all diligence continually apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives, to maintain, set forward, and establish the most blessed word of God and his congregation; and shall labour, by all possible means, to have faithful ministers, truly and purely to minister Christ’s gospel and sacraments to his people: We shall maintain them, nourish them, and defend them, the whole congregation of Christ, and every member thereof, by our whole power, and at the hazard of our lives, against Satan, and all wicked power, who may intend tyranny and trouble against the said congregation: Unto which holy word and congregation we do join ourselves; and we forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan, with all the superstitious abomination and idolatry thereof; and moreover shall declare ourselves manifestly enemies thereto, by this faithful promise before God, testified to this congregation by our subscriptions. At Edinburgh, the third of December, 1557.”g
Had the subscribers of this zealous league been content only to demand a toleration of the new opinions; however incompatible their pretensions might have been with the policy of the church of Rome, they would have had the praise of opposing tyrannical laws, enacted to support an establishment prejudicial to civil society: But it is plain, that they carried their views much farther; and their practice immediately discovered the spirit by which they were actuated. Supported by the authority, which, they thought, belonged to them as the congregation of the Lord, they ordained, that prayers in the vulgar tongueh should be used in all the parish churches of the kingdom; and that preaching, and the interpretation of the scriptures should be practised in private houses, till God should move the prince to grant public preaching by faithful and true ministers.i Such bonds of association are always the forerunners of rebellion; and this violent invasion of the established religion was the actual commencement of it.
Before this league was publicly known or avowed, the clergy, alarmed with the progress of the reformation, attempted to recover their lost authority by a violent exercise of power, which tended still farther to augment the zeal and number of their enemies. Hamilton, the primate, seized Walter Mill, a priest of an irreproachable life, who had embraced the new doctrines; and having tried him at St. Andrews, condemned him to the flames for heresy. Such general aversion was entertained against this barbarity, that it was some time before the bishops could prevail on any one to act the part of a civil judge, and pronounce sentence upon Mill; and even after the time of his execution was fixed, all the shops of St. Andrews being shut, no one would sell a rope to tie him to the stake, and the primate himself was obliged to furnish this implement. The man bore the torture with that courage, which, though usual on these occasions, always appears supernatural and astonishing to the multitude. The people, to express their abhorrence against the cruelty of the priests, raised a monument of stones on the place of his execution; and as fast as the stones were removed by order of the clergy, they were again supplied from the voluntary zeal of the populace.k It is in vain for men to oppose the severest punishment to the united motives of religion and public applause; and this was the last barbarity of the kind, which the catholics had the power to exercise in Scotland.
Some time after, the people discovered their sentiments in such a manner as was sufficient to prognosticate to the priests the fate, which was awaiting them. It was usual on the festival of St. Giles, the tutelar saint of Edinburgh, to carry in procession the image of that saint; but the protestants, in order to prevent the ceremony, found means, on the eve of the festival, to purloin the statue from the church; and they pleased themselves with imagining the surprise and disappointment of his votaries. The clergy, however, framed hastily a new image, which, in derision, was called by the people young St. Giles; and they carried it through the streets, attended by all the ecclesiastics in the town and neighbourhood. The multitude abstained from violence so long as the queen-regent continued a spectator, but the moment she retired, they invaded the idol, threw it in the mire, and broke it in pieces. The flight and terror of the priests and friars, who, it was remarked, deserted, in his greatest distress, the object of their worship, was the source of universal mockery and laughter.
Encouraged by all these appearances the congregation proceeded with alacrity in openly soliciting subscriptions to their league; and the death of Mary of England, with the accession of Elizabeth, which happened about this time, contributed to encrease their hopes of final success in their undertaking. They ventured to present a petition to the regent, craving a reformation of the church, and of the wicked, scandalous, and detestable lives of the prelates and ecclesiastics.l They framed a petition, which they intended to present to parliament, and in which, after premising, that they could not communicate with the damnable idolatry, and intolerable abuses of the papistical church, they desired, that the laws against heretics, should be executed by the civil magistrate alone, and that the scripture should be the sole rule in judging of heresy.m They even petitioned the convocation, and insisted, that prayers should be said in the vulgar tongue, and that bishops should be chosen with the consent of the gentry of the diocese, and priests with the consent of the parishioners.n The regent prudently temporized between these parties; and as she aimed at procuring a matrimonial crown for her son-in-law, the dauphin, she was, on that as well as other accounts, unwilling to come to extremities with either of them.
But after this concession was obtained, she received orders from France, probably dictated by the violent spirit of her brothers, to proceed with rigour against the reformers, and to restore the royal authority by some signal act of power.o She made the more eminent of the protestant teachers be cited to appear before the council at Stirling; but when their followers were marching thither in great multitudes, in order to protect and countenance them, she entertained apprehensions of an insurrection, and, it is said, dissipated the people by a promise,NOTE [B] that nothing should be done to the prejudice of the ministers. Sentence, however, was passed, by which all the ministers were pronounced rebels on account of their not appearing. A measure which enraged the people, and made them resolve to oppose the regent’s authority by force of arms, and to proceed to extremities against the clergy of the established religion.
11th May.
In this critical time, John Knox arrived from Geneva, where he had passed some years in banishment, and where he had imbibed, from his commerce with Calvin, the highest fanaticism of his sect, augmented by the native ferocity of his own character. He had been invited back to Scotland by the leaders of the reformation; and mounting the pulpit at Perth, during the present ferment of men’s minds, he declaimed with his usual vehemence against the idolatry and other abominations of the church of Rome, and incited his audience to exert their utmost zeal for its subversion. A priest was so imprudent after this sermon, as to open his repository of images and reliques, and prepare himself to say mass. The audience, exalted to a disposition for any furious enterprize, were as much enraged as if the spectacle had not been quite familiar to them: They attacked the priest with fury, broke the images in pieces, tore the pictures, overthrew the altars, scattered about the sacred vases; and left no implement of idolatrous worship, as they termed it, entire or undefaced. They thence proceeded, with additional numbers and augmented rage, to the monasteries of the grey and black friars, which they pillaged in an instant: The Carthusians underwent the same fate: And the populace, not content with robbing and expelling the monks, vented their fury on the buildings which had been the receptacles of such abomination; and in a little time nothing but the walls of these edifices were left standing. The inhabitants of Couper in Fife soon after imitated the example.q
Civil wars in Scotland.
The queen-regent, provoked at these violences, assembled an army, and prepared to chastise the rebels. She had about two thousand French under her command, with a few Scottish troops; and being assisted by such of the nobility as were well affected to her, she pitched her camp within ten miles of Perth. Even the earl of Argyle, and lord James Stuart, prior of St. Andrews, the queen’s natural brother, though deeply engaged with the reformers, attended the regent in this enterprise, either because they blamed the fury
