KNOX
682
ENOX
the scene of a riot, followed by the flight of the Catho-
lic clergy. The Lords of the Congregation were
practically in arms against the regent; and Knox,
who had never seemed to be the least anxious for
lonely martyrdom, showed himself full of fight and
courage with a stout body-guard at his back. Re-
pairing to Dundee, he found the Protestants masters
of the situation there, and going thence to Perth he
preached a series of inflammatory sermons which
culminated on 2.5 May, when the mob of that city —
angered, according to Knox, by the regent's having
broken her pledge of toleration of the preachers (see
however as to this, Lang, " Knox and the Reforma-
tion", Appendix A) — sacked and partly demolished
the parish church and several of the monasteries. A
private letter from Knox describes these deeds of
violence and outrage as done by the " brethren"; but
in his " History" — written partly for the followers of
Calvin, who rebuked and condemned such works of
pillage — he ascribes them to the "rascal multitude",
with no reference to their having been inspired by his
own harangues or encouragement.
The Protestants, entrenched in Perth (the only fortified town in Scotland), were now in open re- bellion against the regent, who advanced with her troops from Stirling. A parley with the Congre- gation resulted in a treaty, by which the Protestants were to be allowed complete freedom of worship, and no French troops were to be quartered in the town. Knox meanwhile moved on with his friends to St. Andrews, and, in spite of ArchbLshop Hamilton's threat that if he dared to preach there he should be saluted with "a dozen of culverins, whereof the most part should light upon his nose", he did preach there, with the result that the St. .\ndrows mob rcpeaterl the work of .sack and pillage which had followed his ser- mons at Perth. The wreck of other great aljbeys, such as Scone and Lindores, followed; the Congregation seized Stirling and marched to Edinburgh, the regent meanwhile retreating to Dunbar. Knox accompanied them to the capital, where the same scenes of devasta- tion of churches and monasteries were repeated, and on 7 July he was chosen minister of the Edinburgh Protestants. " We meane no tumult, no alteratioun of authoritie", he wrote to one of his female devotees in Geneva, " but onlie the reformatioun of religioun, and suppressing of idolatrie." Knox wrote these words while actually in full revolt against the " authori- tie" of the regent of the realm, with the further professed desire to prevent the lawful queen, Mary Stuart, from enjoying her hereditary crown.
On 22 July the regent and her advisers suddenly determined to march upon Edinburgh, before the Congregation could concentrate its scattered forces, and the Protestants consequently decided to come to terms, one of the articles of the treaty being that the capital was to be free to choose its own religion. The choice of the majority would certainly not have been in favour of the new doctrines, and this and other points of the agreement were openly violated by the Congregation, who left preachers in possession of the churches, and retired to Stirling. Conscious at this juncture of the imnuiise advantage of gaining the support of England, now a Protestant kingdom, they determined to appeal to Elizabeth, and to send Knox on a mission to her powerful minister Cecil. Knox had already written to Cecil with a letter for the queen which was more or less an apology for his fiery pam- phlet, the " Monstrous Blast". He sailed from Fife to Northumberland early in August, interviewed Croft, the governor of Berwick, and finally brought back to Stirling letters from (!ccil more or less favourable to the demands of the Congrrg;ition for help, but indefin- ite in their terms. Kurt her enrrcspondence, however, elicited from Sadler, lOlizalidh's iigent, a gift of money, which encouraged the Scotch Piotestants to believe that the Queen of England was on their side. Knox
in a letter to Geneva, dated 2 September, describes hia
labours as envoy of the Congregation, and adds that
ministers are now permanently apjjointed to eight of
the chii-f towns in Scotland. A few weeks later, the
regent being then at Leith, which she had strongly
fortilied and garrisoned with French troops, the Con-
gregation took a l)old step. Encouraged by English
sympathy, .'ind still more, perhaps, by the adhesion of
the i^owcrful Karl of Arran to their cause, they pro-
ceeded to depose — or, as Knox thought it more pru-
dent to describe the measure, to suspend from office —
the regent in the name of the young king and queen,
whose great seal was counterfeited in order to give
official weight to the proclamations announcing the
step. Leith was vigorously besieged, but unsuccess-
fully, and Knox continued to appeal energetically to
England for money, troops, and military comman-
ders. The result was that Elizabeth sent a fleet to the
Firth of Forth; the Congregation, thus reinforced,
renewed the siege of Leith, and the regent took refuge
in Edinburgh Castle, where she died on 10 June, 1560.
Knox vilified this imfortunate princess to the end, but
neither contemporary opinion nor the judgment of
history has accepted his verdict, or his outrageous
aspersions on her moral character. A month after her
death the Treaty of Edinburgh was signed by repre-
sentatives of England and France, provitling for the
withdrawal from Scotland of the French and English
troops. The Congregation held a solemn thanks-
giving service at St. Giles's Church, Knox of course
taking the leading part, and profiting by the occasion
to prescribe fimn the pulpit the course which the
Protestant leaders were bound to follow to secure the
triumph of their cause.
That triumph was indeed now imminent. Parlia- ment met on 1 August, Knox preaching daily to crowtled audiences "speciall and vehement" haran- gues on the need of rebuilding the temple, in other words establishing the Protestant i-eligion. The spirit of the assembly — at which, by the way, the sovereign was not represented, and for which she had issued no writ of summons, and which was conse- quently not really a parliament at all — was never in doubt. The new Confession of Faith, drawn up by Knox and his friends, was adopted word for word; the authority of the pope was abolished; the celebra- tion of Mass was forbidden — "under certain penal- ties", as one of Knox's biographers mildly remarks, the penalty for the third offence being in fact death. The formahty of jiraying the young king and queen to ratify these enactments was gone through; but Knox boldly says that such ratification was unnecessary-;- a mere "glorious vane ceremony". The Catholic Church of Scotland was extinct, as far as hunian power could extinguish it, and the Protestant religion officially established. Parliament rose on 25 August, having commissioned Knox and three other ministers to draw up the plan of church-government, known as the " First Book of Discipline", which was ready by the date (20 December, 1560) of the first meeting of the newly constituted "General Assembly" of the Kirk, of which Knox was of course the most prominent member. The " Book of Discipline" was founded on the codes of various Protcstiint bodies, more especially on the Ordonnances of < ieneva aiul on the formularies of the German Church ri>unde<l in London in 1550, both very familiar to Knox and both thor- oughly Cah'inistic in spirit. The opening words are that all doctrine contrary to the new evangel must be suppressed as " damnable to man's salvation"; and it is ordained that every home of the "ancient super- stition" must be cleared out of the land. The several districts of Scotland were to be under the spiritual charge of officials known as superintendents, until such time as ministers were fortheoining for each parish; and there was provision for a comprehensive scheme of national education, elementary, secondary,
