Early Years

JOHN KNOX was born at Haddington In the year 1505. Neither place nor date is, indeed, absolutely beyond dispute; and the slight uncertainty has afforded ample room for the conflicts of antiquarians. The place may have been the village of Gifford, two or three miles from Haddington, but was more probably Gififord-gate, a portion of Haddington itself; and the date may have been a few years later, even as much as ten years, as one keen investigator in such matters has recently suggested; but the variations from the received date are less likely to have been due to exceptional knowledge and care than to carelessness, which in regard to such points was common in those days. Some people even in our day do not know the exact date of their own birth.

In the sixteenth century Haddington appears to have occupied a more outstanding position than it now does among the towns of Scotland, and, lying on the route of armies advancing from England, it had suffered much in the wars with which during the preceding centuries that part of the country was incessantly harassed. In Knox’s time it contained two monasteries and an abbey; so that he had constantly before his eyes, in the years when impressions penetrate most deeply, the system of religion which he was destined to destroy; and, besides, there were several chapels and churches, one of which, on account of its prominence in the landscape, bore the title of the Lamp of Lothian. The town also possessed a school of note, in which, it may be presumed, the future reformer received the elements of education, as no fewer than three other Scottish worthies had done before him — Bower, Wyntoun and Major.

The name of Knox was not scarce in Scotland in that age, or confined to one district of the country; so that it is impossible to infer with any degree of certainty a connection with him every time it turns up in the records of the period. The most prominent Knoxes in the country were those of Ranfurly in Renfrewshire, but no connection between them and the Reformer has been established. In an interview with the Earl of Bothwell, who had estates in Haddingtonshire, Knox said, as he has himself recorded in his History of the Reformation in Scotland: “My grandfathers, paternal and maternal, and my father have served your, lordship’s predecessors, and some of them have died under their standards “; which appears to indicate that he was a farmer’s son with an attachment to the soil and to the feudal superior. His father’s name was William, as was also that of his brother, who figures here and there in his writings as a substantial merchant, trading in his own ship with England, and as a sincere adherent of the Reformed faith. His mother was a Sinclair — a name which he himself sometimes employed in signing his letters, when it was dangerous to make use of his own. Thus it will be seen that he belonged, by birth and upbringing, to the lower order of the middle class, which he was to do so much to educate and elevate; although he was destined to be associated in a remarkable degree with the nobility of his native country; while for the masses of the community, which in our day bulk so largely in the thoughts of religious leaders, he had, apart from his faith in the uplifting influences of the Gospel, very little of the sympathy of the democrat, his commonest name for this class being “the rascal multitude.” 1 History, ii. 343.

Of how Knox came to be set apart for the priesthood, whether by his own choice or by the desire of his parents, we have received no information. But, after being educated at the high-school of his native town, he entered the University of Glasgow in 1522, when he was seventeen years of age. As Haddington lay in the diocese of St. Andrews, it might have been expected that he would have connected himself with the university of that place; but he may have been attracted to the city of the West by the fame of John Major, a Haddingtonshire man like himself and at that date the most renowned professor in the country. It is generally believed that Knox owed not a little to this teacher, especially in the formation of his political views, as did also George Buchanan, who was a student under the same professor a little later at St. Andrews, to which Major had been transferred. Although a bold and progressive thinker. Major never severed himself from the old Church. Buchanan became the foremost Humanist of his age in Scotland and won a European celebrity for the elegance of his Latinity. In this direction Knox achieved no special distinction. His scholary. ship never was worn as an ornament. But it was ample for the needs of the day, for which he employed it. He could refer with facility to the writings of the Fathers and to the incidents of Church History, so far as he needed them. He had of course the mastery of Latin, this being the language in which the intercourse of the learned was carried on and the instructions of universities delivered. Circumstances led to his familiar use of the French language. But, above all, he threw himself on the study of the Holy Bible, which he read in the original tongues, having acquired Hebrew when he was over forty. He was concerned in the translation of the Bible into English which goes by the name of the Geneva Version; and it is from this that his own quotations are generally made; these having for the modern reader, on this account, an odd and uncouth sound. It is in the use of his native tongue, however, that he is a master, his words being, in comparison with those of ordinary writers, like hail to rain, or like bullets in comparison with arrows. His spelling, which is very arbitrary, gives to his writings a foreign and repulsive look; but, in reality, it is quite easy to read them; and it is useless to continue printing them in the old orthography.

As has been remarked, it was in the year 1522, when he was seventeen years of age, that he entered the University of Glasgow. Thereafter he lived fifty years, dying in 1572. But for exactly the half of this period — namely, from 1522 to 1546 — we have next to no information about him; except that a document has been discovered in which he signs himself, in Latin, “John Knox, minister of the Sacred Altar, of the diocese of St. Andrews, notary by Papal Authority,” which betokens that he had become a priest and employed himself, either occasionally or regularly, in notarial business, which would in our day be done by lawyers but in those days was included among the multifarious employments of the priesthood. When again he emerges into visibility, he is engaged in the work of tuition in a. noble family in the neighbourhood of his birthplace. Such employment has always been among those in which men educated for the sacred office might be found engaged; but it is extraordinary to find Knox still occupied with it at the age of two-and-forty. This gives colour to the idea that the date of his birth is too early. But of course there may have been other reasons for the anomaly, such, for example, as scruples about engaging in the regular work of the priesthood. From the time when, in 1547, he comes clearly into view as a public character, we can follow him with full intelligence to the close of his life.

Indeed, his own writings, which abound with autobiographical material, continue from this point to the end without any considerable break. But the mind of the student of Knox lingers wistfully over the unrecorded interval between his seventeenth and his forty-second year. It reminds us of the long period of silence in the biography of our Lord, which is broken only by the incident of His first visit to Jerusalem. Though destitute of the delightful garrulity of Luther about himself, Knox is not particularly reticent; yet there are certain parts of his own biography where we cannot but keenly wish that he had told more; and this is one of them. We are left to infer back from his subsequent life, which is known, to this part, which is unknown. Of one thing we may be certain, that he obtained in those years a precise and extensive knowledge of the religious system which it was to be the work of his life to pull down. Of this he always speaks in the most uncompromising terms, like one whose mind is made up and whose knowledge is so ample and detailed that it is of no use for anyone to argue with him. In Luther’s mind we are permitted to see the doubts and hesitations of one who had been trained to venerate the authority and the institutions of the ancient faith and who, when first he began to perceive that he lo JOHN KNOX

must oppose the traditional system, felt all the horror of a sacrilege. Those conflicts of his with the Devil, which excite so different emotions in different minds, were, in reality, only the imaginative equivalents of very real and just fears, haunting a private man, who was not only departing himself but leading multitudes away from the customs of the fathers, lest he should be leading them to their eternal ruin. Of such timidity there is in Knox no trace; and this may be due to the fact that he had had so long to observe and to think before he came forward as a public guide; though it may be also attributed to the fact mentioned by Dr. McCrie, whose statement has been censured as unpatriotic but never disproved, that the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church had reached a greater height in Scotland than in any other country of Europe. Knox always refers to the old Church as a system past redemption, in defence of which it is useless and impossible to speak. The secularity and rapacity of the higher clergy, who lived as nobles and occupied themselves with everything except religion; the numbers and the viciousness of the friars, who swarmed like locusts in the country and corrupted the morals of the population through the confessional, imperilling the purity of every household by the fury of their passions; the ignorance of the parish priests and their neglect of preaching, whilst they performed the routine of public worship in an unknown tongue — these and suchlike features of the actual condition of the Church were palpable and notorious, crying to Heaven for a reformation in root and branches.

In Luther’s case we know the steps by which the Reformer himself was led into the light; and the affecting story belongs to the romance of Church History. But in the case of Knox we possess no such autobiographical details. On his deathbed he asked his wife to read to him the seventeenth chapter of St. John, “in which,” said he, “I first cast anchor “; but, when this crisis took place, he did not indicate, and he has not indicated it in any of his writings. That there was a crisis there can, however, be little doubt; and the practised skill with which he deals with cases of spiritual upheaval in other souls suggests what had been its nature. In the account of his first preaching in Edinburgh in the year 1555 there is a singular little notice, which will be of significance in this respect to those who have any acquaintance with such matters. To himself it was evidently very notable; for he introduces this morsel of personal history at the very commencement of his account of a great public movement. “At last came John Knox in the end of the harvest, in the year of God 1555, who, first being lodged in the house of that notable man of God, James Syme, began to exhort secretly in that same house; whereto repaired the Laird of Dun, David Forres, and some certain personages of the town, among whom was Elizabeth Adamson, then spouse of James Barron, burgess of Edinburgh, who, by reason that she had a troubled conscience, delighted much in the company of the said John, because that he, according to the grace given unto him, opened more fully the fountain of God’s mercies than did the common sort of teachers that she had heard before (for she had heard none except friars), and did with such greediness drink thereof that at her death she did express the fruit of her hearing to the great comfort of all those that repaired to her; for, albeit that she suffered the most grievous torment in her body, yet out of her mouth was heard nothing but praising of God, except that sometimes she would lament the troubles of those that were troubled by her. Being sometimes demanded by her sisters what she thought of that pain which she then suffered in her body, in respect of that wherewith sometimes she was troubled in spirit, she answered: ‘A thousand years of this torment, and ten times more joined unto it, is not to be compared to the quarter-of-an-hour that I suffered in my spirit. I thank my God through Jesus Christ, that has delivered me from that most fearful pain; and welcome be this, even so long as it pleases His godly Majesty to exercise me therewith.’ A little before her departure, she desired her sisters and some others that were beside her to sing a psalm; and, among others, she appointed the ciii. Psalm, beginning, * My soul, praise thou the ,Lord alway,’ which ended, she said: * At the teaching of this psalm began my soul first effectually to taste of the mercy of my God, which now to me is more sweet and precious than if all the kingdoms of the earth were given me to possess them a thousand years.” The priests urged her with their ceremonies and superstitions; to whom she answered: * Depart from me, ye sergeants of Satan; for I have refused, and in your own presence do refuse, all your abominations. That which ye call your sacrament and Christ’s body (as ye have deceived us to believe in times past) is nothing but an idol, and has nothing to do with the right institution of Jesus Christ; and, therefore, in God’s name, I command you not to trouble me.’ They departed, alleging that she raved and wist not what she said. And she, shortly thereafter, slept in the Lord Jesus, to the no small comfort of those who saw her blessed departing. This we could not omit of this worthy woman, who gave so notable a confession, before that

the great light of God’s Word did universally shine through this realm.” In scenes like this Knox was quite at home; in these the Reformation properly consisted, although they are little heard of; and Knox’s familiarity with them not only separates him by the whole breadth of the heavens from the mere ecclesiastic, who is concerned only with public meetings and Church courts, but affords an interesting glimpse into his own spiritual history.

Knox was not, indeed, a reformer in the same sense as Zwingli or Luther — men in whom the conception of a new Church and a new world arose as an original inspiration and who fought their way to clear apprehensions of the truth by the force of their own spiritual genius. He belonged to the second generation; and his merit lay in the thoroughness with which he grasped ideas which were already in the air, in the force with which he drove these into the mind of his country, and in the institutions by which he provided for their conservation. In the first book of his History of the Reformation he has himself lovingly commemorated

* History i. 245.

those who were his predecessors. The stirrings of dissatisfaction with the actual condition of things and of aspiration after a better time came originally from England, as many as thirty persons of condition being tried for being followers of Wycliffe as early as 1494 in Ayrshire, which in the subsequent period remained a centre of reforming activity. Even before this, a spar from the wreck of the reforming efforts of Huss in Bohemia was thrown up on the East coast of Scotland, in the person of Paul Craw, a Bohemian physician, who was burnt to death at St. Andrews in 143 1. As the Reformation blazed forth in Germany through the teaching of Luther, the sparks began to fall even in Scotland. “At this time,” says Knox, “the knowledge of God did wondrously increase within this realm, partly by reading, partly by brotherly conference, which in those dangerous days was used to the comfort of many; but chiefly by merchants and 1 mariners, who, frequenting other countries, heard N the true doctrine affirmed, and the vanity of the / papistical religion openly rebuked; among whom Dundee and Leith were principals.” The truth penetrated the cloisters, and its presence was suspected even in the court. When James V. died, in 1543, there was, in the pocket of his coat, a list 1 History i. 61.

of no fewer than a hundred — another report says, a hundred and sixty — persons, some of them belonging to the highest nobility of the realm, whom the ecclesiastical authorities accused of heresy and were urging the king to cut off.

But the two men, to whom, in the highest sense, the title of Reformer belongs in Scotland are undoubtedly Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart; and on both Knox bestows, in his History ample and affectionate commemoration. The former of the two had learned the doctrines of the Reformation at the feet of Luther and Melanchthon themselves and, in imitation of the latter, whose principal theological work bears the name of Common Places — a term signifying heads or subjects under which the contents of a book are arranged — had given them to his countrymen in their native tongue in a brief volume popularly known as Patrick’s Places.. and printed in full by Knox in the History, He i’ had to die for his opinions at St. Andrews in 1527; but the charm of his youth and noble lineage, his sweetness of disposition, the cruelty of his martyrdom, and the constancy of his faith in the hour of death so penetrated the heart of the country, with ruth and inquiry, that it was commonly said I that the smoke of Master Patrick had infected all

“reek.”

on whom it had blown. A striking evidence of the rapidity with which the new opinions were spreading was afforded by the passing of an Act of Parliament in 1543, giving permission to all to read the Scriptures in their own tongue and abolish- j ing all acts to the contrary. “This,” says Knox, “was no small victory of Christ Jesus, fighting against the conjured enemies of His verity. Then might have been seen the Bible lying on almost every gentleman’s table. Thereby did the knowledge of God wondrously increase, and God gave His Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance.”

But the most distinguished of the martyrs of the Reformation was George Wishart. Of his life Knox gives, in his History, an account that is classic in its condensed completeness. “A man,” he calls him, “of such grace as before him was never heard within this realm, and are rare yet to be found in any man, notwithstanding this great light of God that since his days has shined unto us.” He was brother of the Laird of Pitarrow, in Forfarshire, and first fell under the suspicion of the ecclesiastical authorities through teaching the Greek [ Testament in Montrose. The chief scene of his labours was Dundee, from which, however, he was History J i. 100.

banished through the machinations o the hierarchy. Passing to the West country, he received a hearty welconae there. But, hearing that the plague had broken out in Dundee, he returned; and, preaching from the town-wall to the diseased on the one side and the healthy on the other, he exhibited such courage and intrepidity in grappling with the terrible visitation that he became the idol of the inhabitants, among whom the Reformation in subsequent years possessed a numerous following. Nevertheless, he was hounded from the place by the agents of the Church and had to flee to Edinburgh. The last place in which he preached was Haddington, Knox’s native town. On 16 January 1546 he was arrested at the neighbouring House of Ormiston; and on I March he suffered at the stake in St. Andrews. The contriver of this judicial murder, as well as the instigator for many years of all the measures taken against the spread of the Reformed doctrines in the country, was Cardinal Beaton, the Primate of Scotland, who, surrounded by other proud prelates, lounged out of a window in his palace, to watch the sufferings of the martyr, after giving orders that all the guns of the Castle should be pointed to the place of execution, lest there should be any attempt at a rescue. This man was a typical ecclesiastic of the time. He was of noble family and had filled

J numerous political offices, as member of parliament, ambassador, and the like. On the death of James v., he produced a will of the deceased monarch, by which he was constituted Regent of the kingdom; but his claims were set aside for those of the Earl of Arran, over whom, however, he soon acquired complete ascendency. Meantime he had been rising from stage to stage of ecclesiastical dignity, till, in 1538, he obtained the hat of a cardinal. He was a man of towering ambition and great energy, which was directed with special vigour towards clearing the Church of heresy. But his character was wholly unworthy of his sacred office: he was acknowledged to be the father of a number of sons and daughters, the latter of whom he married into the noble families of the country. When such was the record of the highest dignitary of the Scottish Church, what was to / be expected of the rest of the clergy? And this was the man who was hunting to death people as virtuous as he was vicious. Blunted as the conscience of the country had become through the long prevalence of such abuses, there were not awanting those now who were sensible of the glaring inconsistency; and the martyrdom of Wishart wrought up their indignation to fever heat. They resolved that the murder of their beloved teacher should be avenged; and five of them — not ignorant

I fanatics, but all persons of repute, including Norman ‘Leslie, brother of the Earl of Rothes, and Kirkcaldy of Grange — surprised the Cardinal in his own palace on 29 May 1546 and stabbed him to death, after assuring him that their only motive was to avenge the death of Wishart and remove an obstinate enemy of the holy Evangel.^ Of course they knew themselves to be outlaws; but they seized the Castle of St Andrews and defied the Government, while there gathered round them a band bearing some resemblance to that which gathered round David in the Cave of Adullam, yet including also such men as Henry Balnaves, a Lord of Session, and Sir David Lindsay, the poet. For months they held out against all the power that the Government was able to bring against them by land; but at length their stronghold was captured !by ships summoned by the Queen Regent from France; and in the same vessels the Castillians, as they were called, were borne away to that country, to be imprisoned there in fortresses or condemned to the galleys.

It is in connection with these stirring events that

Knox emerges from the obscurity in which he had

been enveloped for five-and-twenty years. When

Wishart came from Dundee to Eastlothian, Knox

Herkless, Cardinal Beaton.

“waited upon him carefully,” as he narrates himself; and he was with him during his activity in Haddington. It was at the house in which Knox was acting as tutor that the martyr was arrested; and Knox desired to accompany him; but the servant of God replied: “Nay, return to your pupils; ( and God bless you! one is sufficient for a sacrifice.” Unwillingly Knox yielded, giving up a two-handed sword which he had been bearing before the Reformer — a means of protection to which the latter had had to resort, and for the use of which, in spite of the unwarlike nature of his employments hitherto, Knox was not perhaps ill adapted.

But Knox was now a marked man, and the myrmidons of the hierarchy were on his track. At all events he felt himself insecure; and he betook himself to the Cave of Adullam at St. Andrews. The parents of his pupils were also suspected persons; and, either for this reason or because they put a high value on the instructions of their tutor, they permitted their boys to accompany him. “Besides their grammar and other human authors,” says Knox, speaking of himself, “he read unto them a catechism, account whereof he caused them to give publicly in the parish Church of St. Andrews. He read, moreover, unto them the Evangel of John, “bairns.”

proceeding where he left off at his departing from Longniddry, where before his residence was; and that lecture he read in the chapel within the Castle at a certain hour.” By these prelections the attention of the Castillians was directed to the gifted newcomer; and they began to urge him to favour them with the exercise of his talents in the pulpit But to this he was entirely averse, till, instigated by Sir David Lindsay, they resorted to a pious ruse to overcome his scruples. One Sunday their preacher, John Rough, after discoursing on the election of ministers, there and then addressed to Knox a call in the name of all present, proceeding in these moving terms:” In the name of God and of His Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of those here present who call you by my mouth, I charge you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but that you tender the glory of God, the increase of Christ’s kingdom, the edification of your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom you understand well enough to be oppressed with the multitude of labours, that you take upon you the public office and charge of preaching, even as you look to avoid God’s heavy displeasure and desire that He shall multiply His

History, i. 186.

graces with you.” Then, addressing himself to the congregation, he demanded, “Was not this your charge to me? and do you not approve this vocation?” They answered: “It was; and we approve it.” Abashed and terrified, Knox fled to his? chamber, as Saul, in similar circumstances, hid himself among the stuff. For days his distress continued; !,.tput, when he came forth from his privacy and ascended the pulpit, it was to deliver a sermon wHich made all who heard it aware that a prophet had risen up amongst them. Some of the listeners said: “Others lop off the branches of the papacy, but he strikes at the root, to destroy the whole “; others said: “If the doctors and magistri nostri defend not now the Pope and his authority which in their own presence is so manifestly impugned, the Devil have my part of him and of his laws likewise “; others said: “Master George Wishart spoke never so plainly, and yet f he was burnt; even so will he be.” Thus were the lips unsealed which had been kept dumb so long and the sluices opened to let out the waters of thought and conviction which had so long been accumulating. In the weeks that followed there began to blossom in the heart of Knox that peculiar

History, i. 192.

fSH-’)

„ 1 ^, ‘ttaffection which knits the minister of the Gospel to those for whom he has travailed in birth till Christ be formed in them; and to the end of his life he cherished towards St. Andrews that first love which a pastor feels for the first place in which he has exercised his ministry.