KNOX
681
ENOX
the deed with a gleeful and mocking levity strangely
unbecoming in a Christian preacher, though his
panegyrists speak of it merely as his " vein of humour ".
Some months later we tind him, with his pupils, shut
up in the castle of St. Andrews, which Beaton's mur-
derers and their friends held for some months against
the regent Arran and the Government. On 31 July,
1547, the besiegers being reinforced by a large French
fleet, the castle was surrendered, and Knox was im-
prisoned with some others for nineteen months on
board the French galleys and at Rouen. His captiv-
ity, however, was not rigorous enough to prevent
him from writing a theological treatise, and preaching
to his fellow-prisoners.
In 1549 Knox was free to return home; but he preferred to stay for a time in England, where, under Edward VI, he would feel himself secure, rather than to expose himself to fresh arrest in Scotland. He received a state licence to preach at Berwick, where he remained two years, and was then transferred to Newcastle, and at the same time appointed a royal chaplain. He preached at least twice before the young king, and in October, 1552, was nominated to the Bishopric of Rochester, which he refused, declin- ing also a benefice in the city of London. His own alleged reason for declining these preferments was that he thought the .\nglican Church too favourable to Roman doctrine, and that he could not bring him- self to kneel at the communion service. When Edward VI was succeeded in July, 1553, by his Catho- lic sister Mary, Knox continued his preaching for a time, and, as long as he remained in England, took care not to attack the new sovereign, for whom indeed he published a devout prayer. But early in 1554 he thought it prudent to take refuge in Dieppe, having meanwhile gone through a form of marriage with Marjorie, fifth daughter of Mrs. Bowes, a Calvinistic lady of liis own age living in Newcastle, who had taken him as her spiritual adviser. From Dieppe he went to Geneva, partly to consult Calvin and other divines as to the lawfulness and expediency of resisting the rule of Mary Tudor in England and Mary of Guise, just appointed Regent, in Scotland; but he got httle satisfaction from liis advisers. In September, 1554, he accepted the post of chaplain to the English Protes- tants at Frankfort; but his Puritanism revolted against the use of King Edward's prayer-book and of the Anglican ceremonial. Schism arose in the congre- gation: Knox's opponents accused him of comparing the Emperor Charles to Nero in a published tract; he was ordered Ijy the authorities to leave Frankfort, and returning to Geneva he ministered for a time to the English congregation there. In August, 1555, how- ever, an urgent summons from his mother-in-law, Mrs. Bowes, caused him (as he says, "maist con- trarious to mine own judgement") to set out for Scot- land and join his wife at Berwick. The new doctrines had made headway during his absence, and he found himself able to preach Ijoth in public and in the coun- try houses of his supporters among the nobles and gentry. At a historic supper, given by his friend Erskine of Dun, it was formally decided that no " be- liever in the Evangel" could attend Mass; and the external separation of the party from Catholic practice, as well as doctrine, thus became complete. Knox, whose rehgion had now become entirely of the Old- Testament type, boldly proclaimed that adherents to the old faith were as truly idolaters as the Jews who sacrificed their children to Moloch, and that the ex- termination of idolaters was the clear duty of Chris- tian princes and magistrates, and, failing them, of all individual " behevers". In the letter, however, which he addressed about this time, on the advice of two of his noble supporters, to the queen regent, he as- sumed a somewhat different tone, appearing to peti- tion only for toleration for his co-religionists. The letter contained at the same time violent abuse of
Prom the picture in the collection of
Lord Torphichen at Calder House
Catholics and their beliefs, and threatened the regent
with "torment and pain everlasting", if she did not
act on his counsel. Mary seems to have treated the
effusion with silent contempt, which Knox resented
bitterly; but it was no doubt with the conviction that
the time was not yet come for the triumph of his cause
that he returned to his ministry in Geneva (in the
summer of 1556), sending his wife and her mother
thither before him. Immediately on his departure
he was cited to appear before the judges in Edin-
burgh, condemned and outlawed (in absence) as con-
tumacious, and publicly burnt in effigy.
Until the end of 155.8 Knox remained at his post in Geneva, imbibing from Calvin all those rigid and
autocratic ideas
of church disci- pline which he was subsequentlj' to introduce into Scotland — Eng- land would have none of them — and which were to be followed b\ over a century of unrest, persecu- tion, and civil war. His two sons. Nathaniel and Eleazar, were born to him at Geneva, and he was joined there by Mrs. Locke and other female admirers from England and Scotland. Glencairn and other friends tried to persuade him in 1557 to come back, on the ground that persecution was diminishing, and he actually got as far as Dieppe on his journey home. Here his courage seems to have evaporated ; and after ministering for a time to the Dieppe Protestants he went back to Geneva. During 1558 his pen was constantly busy: he pubUshed his letter to the queen regent with com- ments, and his famous "First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women", directed against Mary Tudor, Mary of Guise, Catherine de' Medici, and the youthful Mary Stuart, who had just married the French Dauphin. In other writings he reiterated his views that every Christian man (i. e. Protestant) had a right to slaughter every idolater (i. e. Catholic), if he got an opportunity. In a " Brief Exhortation to England" he insisted on the expulsion of all "dregs of Popery" and the introduction of the full "Kirk discipline" of Calvin and Geneva; and in his "Treatise on Predestination" he answered the "blasphemous cavillations" of an Anabaptist. The last-named work was not published until 1560.
At length, in the first days of 1559 (Queen Mary of England having been succeeded by her sister Elizabeth a few weeks previously), Knox deemed it safe or opportune to leave Geneva for Scotland. He came to Dieppe, and, finding himself refused a safe- conduct through England, travelled by sea from Dieppe to Leith, arriving on 2 May. He had already heard by letter that the Scottish Protestants were no longer in any danger. The queen regent had indeed denounced and forbidden by proclamation attacks on priests, distiu'bance of Catholic services, invasion of churches by lay preachers, and religious tumults in general. But she was already in the grip of deadly illness, was meditating a retirement to France, and, notwithstanding certain advices from that country, had neither the power nor the intention of organizing a movement to suppress the Protestant party in the realm, which was growing daily in power and in- fluence. St. Giles's Church in Edinburgh had been
