Exile

When the garrison of St. Andrews had to surrender, Knox, like the rest of the Castillians, was carried off to captivity in France; and it was his hard lot to be sent to the galleys. These things took place in 1547, when he was two-and-forty years of age. He was a man rather under the middle height, with broad shoulders, swarthy face, black hair, and a beard of the same colour a span-and-a-half long. He had heavy eyebrows, beneath which the eyes were deeply sunk, while the cheekbones were prominent and the cheeks ruddy. The mouth was large, and the lips full, especially the upper one. The whole aspect of the man was not unpleasing; and, in moments of emotion, it was invested with an air of dignity ’ and majesty. So he is described by a contemporary, writing carefully for the purpose of instructing an engraver engaged on a portrait of the subject. The late Thomas Carlyle, in an essay which he wrote in old age on the portraits of Knox, expressed strong scepticism as to the accuracy of the traditional bearded portraits, as being too sensational, his preference being given, on internal grounds, to what is known as the Somerville Portrait, which is that of an extremely Scotch, sensible, good-humoured, but beardless face. It has, however, since been proved by Dr. Hume Brown, through the recovery of the document above quoted, that the traditional portrait is the genuine one. The face is more that of a French or Swiss pastor than of an ordinary Scot; and the copious beard supplies a feature which in any age must have been peculiar. After the date at which Knox entered so dramatically — holding the two-handed sword in front of Wishart — on the stage of public life, he was to live other five-and-twenty years; and this period falls into two halves of almost equal length — the first from 1547 to 1559, during which he was out of his native country, save for one somewhat prolonged visit in 1555-6, and the second from 1559 to his death in 1572, during which he was hardly ever out of Scotland and never out of the island of Britain.

His twelve years of exile commenced with about Hume Brown, John ICnox, ii. 320.

a year-and-a-half in the French galleys, where he was the companion of convicts, and the whip of the slave-driver cracked over his head. The galley in which he was confined, Nostre Dame by name, sailed on the rivers of France, and, in addition to the hardness of their toil, the victims of justice were galled by its uselessness. Dr. Hume Brown has drawn, from official sources, a picture of the life of the galley-slaves appalling in its realism; but there is room to hope that, in Knox’s case at least, there may have been some mitigation of its horrors; for during this time he edited, annotated and sent home to the friends of the Reformation in Scotland a treatise which a fellow-prisoner, Henry Balnaves, already mentioned, had written in the prison of Rouen; and such literary activity would hardly have been compatible with a rigour of discipline as unmitigated as Dr. Hume Brown assumes to have prevailed, Knox tells a story of a priest, who ministered to the prisoners, carrying round, on one of the festivals of the Church, the image of some saint, to be kissed; whereupon one of the prisoners stoutly refused and, when the holy man insisted, seized the painted piece of wood and, flinging it overboard, exclaimed: “Let us see if she can swim; she is light enough.” Of this adventure Knox is generally supposed to have been himself the hero; but, if so, the fact that such an act of insubordination could be performed with impunity seems to indicate that the discipline was not veryrigorous. Another sign of lax discipline is that four of the Castillians managed to escape from Mont St. Michel; and it is an indication of the position held by Knox among his fellow-exiles that, before carrying out their design, they consulted him as to its lawfulness. His reply was that, if they could escape without shedding any man’s blood, the attempt might lawfully be made. And made it was with success; but so many vicissitudes had the runaways to encounter that Knox was in England before them. On one occasion the galley in which he was chained happened to sail round Scotland; and it passed so near to the Fife coast that the spires of St. Andrews could be seen in the distance. Knox happened at the time to be so ill that his recovery was despaired of; but, when a comrade pointing towards the land, asked him if he recognised it, “Yes,” replied the invalid, raising himself on his elbow, “I know it well; for I see the steeple of that place where God first in public opened my mouth to His glory; and I am fully persuaded, how weak soever I now appear, that I shall not depart this life, till that my tongue shall glorify His godly name in the same place.” This prophecy was destined to be remarkably fulfilled; and it was only one of many instances which caused the character of seer or prophet to be attributed to Knox, both by others and himself, as it had previously been to Wishart and was afterwards to Peden and others of the Scots Worthies. The comrade who succoured Knox on this occasion was James Balfour, who lived to be Lord President in his native country, but became to Knox an object of abhorrence, because he appeared to him to have become a backslider from the faith and profession of his youth; and this was not the only one of the Castillians who subsequently rose high in the world but, in the course of so doing, lost the ardour of his youthful convictions.

Such are the fragmentary notices which can be gleaned from this painful portion of Knox’s life. In subsequent years he did not like to speak of it; the iron had entered too deeply into his soul. Nevertheless he derived from it one invaluable lesson; for it taught him to pray. In A Declaration of the True Nature and Object of Prayer — one of the tenderest things he ever wrote — he observes: “Trouble and fear are very spurs to prayer; for, when man, compassed about with vehement calamities and vexed with continual solicitude, having by help of man no hope of deliverance, with sore oppressed and punished heart, fearing also greater punishment to follow, from the deep pit of tribulation doth call to God for comfort and help, such prayer ascendeth to God’s presence and returneth not in vain. For I, the writer hereof, (let this be said to the laud and praise of God alone) in anguish of mind and vehement tribulation and affliction called to the Lord, when not only the ungodly but even my faithful brethren, yea, and my own self judged my cause to be irremediable. And yet in my greatest calamity, and when my pains were most cruel, would His eternal wisdom that my hands should write far contrary to the judgment of carnal reason, which His mercy hath proved true, blessed be His name! And, therefore, dare I be bold, in the verity of God’s Word, to promise that, notwithstanding the vehemency of trouble, the long continuance thereof, the desperation of all men, the fearfulness, danger, dolour and anguish of our own hearts, if we call constantly to God, that beyond expectation of all men. He shall deliver!” although he adds, with touching brevity, a little later: “How hard this battle is, no man knoweth but he who in himself hath suffered trial.”

So shy is he of speech on the subject of his Works iii. 90, 100.

imprisonment that he has not informed us how it came to an end. But in February 1549 he was in England; and all the Castillians had also been set free. At that date King Edward VI. had already been for two years on the throne of England; and under his godly encouragement the work of reformation, which had proceeded so slowly and dubiously during the reign of his father, was going on apace. At the head of

ecclesiastical affairs was Cranmer, whose views were

broad and statesmanlike. The Church of England had not then taken up the isolated position which it has since adopted among the Churches of the Reformation, but frankly recognised its unity with all branches of the Church which had separated from Rome; and Archbishop Cranmer did not scruple to lay hold of men of talent, professing the Reformed opinions, wherever he could find them, and to send them forth as labourers into the harvest, the harvest being truly great and the labourers few. From the Continental Churches he introduced professors to the theological chairs in the universities; and he was only too glad to secure for the pulpit a preacher of the calibre of Knox from the Scottish Church. Accordingly Knox found immediate employment; and he continued in the service of the Church of England for the next five years.^ No question about his orders was ever raised; his ability to do the work was the only qualification needed; for the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind was then breathing over the Churches of the Reformation from end to end, imparting to them a catholicity very different from the sentiment which has sometimes since borne that name falsely, because its purpose is to exclude and not to include.

He was employed first at Berwick and subsequently at Newcastle-on-Tyne; and he could afterwards say of his ministry there: “God is witness, and I refuse not your own judgments, how simply and uprightly I conversed and walked amongst you. Though in His presence I am nothing but a mass of corruption, rebellion and hypocrisy, yet, as concerning you and the doctrine taught amongst you, as then I walked, so now do I write in the presence of Him who only knoweth and shall reveal the secrets of all hearts, that neither for fear did I spare to speak the simple truth to you, neither for hope of worldly promotion, dignity or honour did I willingly adulterate any part of God’s Scripture, whether it were in exposition, in preaching, contention or writing, but that simply and plainly, as it pleased the merciful goodness of God to give unto LoRiMER: John Knox and the Church oj England, ’ me the utterance, understanding and spirit, I did i distribute the bread of life (I mean God’s most holy Word) as of Christ Jesus I had received it. I sought neither pre-eminence, glory nor riches. My honour was that Christ Jesus should reign, my glory that the light of His truth should shine in you, and my greatest riches that in the same ye should be constant.”

But higher promotion was in store for him. In 1 55 1 he was appointed one of the six Chaplains-in-Ordinary to the King, of whom two in turn should always be resident at court, while the other four, when not thus employed, were to itinerate in destitute parts of the country. Thus it fell to Knox’s lot to be preacher to the most distinguished and influential audience in England; and this position involved him in delicate operations, which were at that time in course of being performed. Thus, in 1552 he had a hand in the compilation of the Book of Common Prayer; and he is known to have procured the insertion of a rubric explaining that by the act of kneeling at the reception of the sacrament no adoration of the elements is intended, “for that were idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians.” “A runnagate Scot,” complained a controversialist in the reign of Mary Tudor,” did take away the 1 Works, iii. 165.

adoration or worshipping of Christ in the sacrament; so much prevailed that one man’s authority at that time.” In like manner an edition of the Articles of the Church of England, issued in this reign, was delivered to the six Royal Chaplains, of whom Knox was one, to make a report of their opinion touching the same, and, although nothing can be pointed out in the Articles which indubitably came from his hand, he was not the man to let such an opportunity pass without making the most of it

If he did not remain in the Church of England, it was not because that body was unwilling to retain him, but because he was unwilling to commit himself unreservedly to it. His appointment to the See of Rochester is known to have been discussed in the highest quarters, and it was probably due to his own disinclination that it did not take place. At all events it is certain that he was offered the living of All Hallows, in Bread Street, London. Indeed, his refusal of this preferment caused him to be called before the Privy Council, where were present the Bishops of Canterbury and Ely, my Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Northampton, the Earl of Bedford, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Master Comptroller, my Lord Chamberlain, both the Secretaries, and other inferior Lords. He was asked three questions — why he refused the benefice provided for him; whether he thought that no Christian might serve in the ecclesiastical ministration according to the rites and laws of the realm of England; and whether kneeling at the Lord’s Table was not indifferent. To the first he answered that he could be of more use elsewhere than in London; to the second, that many things were worthy of reformation in the ministry of England, without the reformation whereof no minister did discharge or could discharge his conscience before God; for no minister in England had authority to divide the lepers from the sound, though this was a chief point of his office; yet did he not refuse such office as might appear to promote God’s glory in utterance of Christ’s Gospel in a mean degree, where more he might edify by preaching of the true Word than hinder by sufferance of manifest iniquity, seeing that reformation of manners did not appertain to all ministers. To the third he answered, that Christ’s action in itself was most perfect, and Christ’s action was done without kneeling; that kneeling was man’s addition or imagination; that it was most sure to follow the example of Christ, whose action was done sitting 7 and not kneeling. It is strange to think of such principalities and powers listening to such replies or asking such questions. Yet, after long reasoning. it was said unto him, that he was not called of anyevil mind; they were sorry to know him of a contrary mind to the Common Order. He answered that he was more sorry that a Common Order should be contrary to Christ’s institution. With some gentle speeches he was dismissed.”^ But he continued after this to discharge his functions as before; and we find him itinerating, not only in the North, but in Buckinghamshire and Kent

Of Edward VI. Knox had formed the very highest opinion. “We had,” says he, “a king of so godly disposition towards virtue and the truth of God, that none from the beginning passed him, and to my knowledge, none of his years did ever match him.” But of the courtiers and statesmen by whom the youthful monarch was surrounded his estimate was very different; and he prophesied distinctly what a backsliding there was likely to be in England, if a Romanist should come to the throne and the wind of persecution begin to blow upon the religion which had sprung up like the gourd of Jonah in the sunshine of the court Already Knox had acquired the habit, of which no injunctions to the contrary could ever cure him, of introducing into his sermons allusions of the most uncompromising character to current events. In the very last sermon * IVorks, ill. 87, which he preached before the King, taking for his text the words, “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me,” he proceeded to observe that commonly the most godly princes had officers and chief councillors most ungodly. Were David and Hezekiah, he asked, princes of great and godly gifts and experience, abused by crafty councillors and dissembling hypocrites? “What wonder is it, then, that a young and innocent King be deceived by crafty, covetous, wicked and ungodly councillors? I am greatly afraid that Achitophel be councillor, that Judas bear the purse, and that Shebna be scribe, comptroller, and treasurer.” And there could be no doubt to which persons in the auditory these terms applied.

In July 1553 the precocious but delicate monarch sank into the grave; and, the following month, his sister Mary came to the throne. A few months of grace were allowed to the Protestants; but, before the end of the year, the Roman Catholic reaction had set in with irresistible force; and it was dangerous for prominent professors of the Reformed religion to be seen on the soil of England. Knox lingered as long as he dared, still prosecuting the work of preaching the Gospel after the time of grace had expired; and he went out of the country Works, iii. 282 only with compunction; but at length the persuasions of his friends prevailed; and in March 1554 he found himself at Dieppe, facing a new period of exile on the Continent, which was to last as long as the reign of the Queen.

He had no place to go to; and, in spite of his incessant labours in the service of the Church of England, he was so poor that he was under the necessity of appealing almost immediately to private friends in England for the means of procuring daily bread. After some uncertain movements from place to place, in the course of which he came into personal relations with several eminent Continental Reformers, he arrived in Geneva, where he had the privilege of forming the acquaintance of Calvin, then near the height of his influence. By his advice he accepted an invitation to become the pastor, or rather one of the pastors, of the English congregation at Frankfort-on-the-Main; and in this position he was settled before the end of the year.

This English congregation in a foreign city was composed of exiles and their families, who had fled from England to escape from the persecution of the reigning monarch. Settlements of similar character had at the same time been formed at other places on the Continent, such as Zurich and Strasbourg; but Frankfort proved the favourite place of resort, because the use of a church had been granted to the exiles by the magistrates. The use of the same building had been previously obtained by a Walloon congregation, which had fled from England on the accession of Mary, and to the English the privilege was granted on condition that they employed the service of this French congregation — a condition which was understood to be sufficiently fulfilled by the employment of the English Prayer Book, with the litany and the responses left out and a few other slight modifications introduced. Such alterations suited Knox well enough, the portions left out being precisely those to which he had already in England expressed conscientious objections; and there were other persons in the congregation to whom this modified Prayer Book was more acceptable than the original. On the other hand, there was a party who would have preferred the book unaltered. All, however, was going with tolerable smoothness, till a further party of exiles from England arrived on the scene, certain aggressive members of which, the first Sunday they were in church, gave the responses at the points at which they had been accustomed to do so in England; and, the following Sunday, they contrived to have the litany read. Knox, in preaching, represented to them the disorderliness of their conduct in interfering with an arrangement agreed to before their arrival and laid down by the magistrates as the condition on which the use of the church had been allowed. But there was an element in the congregation favourable to the Prayer Book as it was; and the newcomers carried things with a high hand. They were not yet, indeed, members of the congregation, and, by keeping them out, Knox might have had a majority favourable to his own views. He, however, disdained to make use of this advantage; and they were no sooner in the majority than they proceeded to use their strength against him and his supporters. Then ensued a storm in a teapot, the minute details of which are still traceable, if it were worth while; and it has been said that the contest was the entire Puritan Period in miniature. In the end Knox’s opponents resorted to the use of an equivocal measure by which the controversy was ended as far as he was concerned: carrying to the magistrates a copy of a pamphlet which he had recently published, entitled A Faithful Admonition to England they pointed out several references to the Queen of England and to her husband, Philip of Spain, of a character so unparliamentary that the Works, iv. I ff.

City of Frankfort might, it was suggested, become obnoxious to these potentates, if it was known to be harbouring the man who had made them. This device was successful, the magistrates requesting Knox to quit the city.

He returned to Geneva; and with him went such of those who had been on his side in the controversy as were in a position to change their residence. By these was formed at Geneva a refugee congregation, which grew till it numbered over two hundred members. Of this body Knox became pastor, or rather one of the pastors; for he had as colleague Christopher Goodman, who was to be closely associated with him in more phases than one of his subsequent history. Hardly had Knox, however, commenced his labours in this new sphere when he was called away to visit his native country, in which he stayed from September 1555 to July 1556.

Six years had elapsed since he had left Scotland; and in the interval events had been marching at a rate of which Knox himself had had no conception; the result being that he received a welcome far beyond his expectations. Partly the change was due to the growing intelligence of the country and to the utter inability of the Catholic Church, as it then existed, to stand the least inquiry. Of this a pathetic proof had been given in the year in which Knox had left the country, when a Provincial Synod passed no fewer than sixty-eight statutes of a reformatory character, in which it was confessed that the root and cause of the troubles and heresies which afflicted the Church were the corruption, the [profane lewdness, the gross ignorance of churchmen of almost all ranks, particulars being added too unsavoury for quotation. Partly it was due to the influx into Scotland, on the accession of Mary in England, of Protestants who might hope for less inquisition there into their beliefs; among whom were such ministers as Harlaw and Willock, who became extremely useful in the North. From Edinburgh, on 9 Novertiber, Knox writes: “Albeit my journey toward Scotland was most contrary to my own judgment, yet this day I praise God for them whom he made the instrument to draw me from the den of my own ease, to contemplate and behold the fervent thirst of our brethren,! night and day sobbing and groaning for the bread of life. If I had not seen it with mine eyes in my own country, I could not have believed it.” And a little later he writes:” The trumpet blew the old sound three days together, till private houses of indifferent largeness could not contain the voice of it.

Oh, sweet were the death that should follow such forty days in Edinburgh as here I have had three!” It is not to be forgotten that Knox returned to his native land surrounded with a halo of prestige due to his association with the leaders of thought and action in other countries; but more is required to explain a success like this.

Among his hearers in ‘Edinburgh were many solid and excellent citizens, the names of some of whom he gives, though they are now forgotten, and honourable women not a few. Of figures more notable were young Maitland of Lethington, whose subsequent course was to be so ambiguous, and Erskine of Dun, who was always faithful and continued throughout the subsequent years to be an ornament to the cause to which he was attached. By the latter Knox was taken to his residence in Forfarshire, where he entered into the labours of his predecessor Wishart with much success. Later his headquarters were at Calder House, near Midcalder, where not only did Sir James Calder and his sons espouse the cause, but round the preacher were gathered young men destined to rise to positions of the greatest influence in their native country — Lord Erskine, the future Earl of Mar; Lord Lorn, afterwards Earl of Argyle; and Lord James Stewart, afterwards the Regent Moray. From here he passed

to Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, where the ground had been prepared by the Lollards of Kyle, already mentioned; and here, among other men of distinction, the Earl of Glencairn joined him, proving to be of inestimable value to the cause in subsequent years. By Glencairn another great noble, the Earl Marischal, was brought into contact with Knox, whom he persuaded to write a letter to the Queen Regent; for they were at the stage when young converts ‘, believe that the truth has only to be set forth in its ‘naked simplicity to win universal assent. Knox penned the letter, putting into it not only the pith of his reasoning power but the utmost courtesy of which he was capable. But they were to learn the lesson that Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon; for Mary of Lorraine, having perused it, handed it to the Archbishop of Glasgow, who was standing by, with the remark: “Please you, my lord, to read a pasquil” — a remark which, when Knox heard of it, entered like iron into his soul. Thus was Knox permitted for months to go unchallenged up and down the country, by the attraction of his personality and the persuasion of his preaching winning adherents of great weight and in surprising numbers to the cause. But at length the sleeping enemy awoke; and he was summoned to answer for himself in the Church of the Blackfriars in Edinburgh. Though well aware [ that the fate of Patrick Hamilton and George J Wishart was probably in store for him, he answered the summons, appearing at the appointed day and hour. But the opposite party took fright and deserted the diet; whereupon he went on preaching in Edinburgh to still larger audiences. But the situation could not have lasted much longer as it was; and it was well that, at the critical juncture, he received a summons, which he did not feel himself entitled to disobey, to return to his charge at Geneva.

The value of this visit to his native country i had been incalculable. The men and women whom / he was privileged to bring to decision proved to’ be those on whom the whole weight of the cause was subsequently to rest, and they felt for him the affection and devotion due to the man to whom they owed themselves. Wherever he had gone, he had dispensed the Lord’s Supper in the simple form of the Reformed Church; and people, long accustomed to the wearisome celebra- 1 tion of the Mass in a strange tongue, felt the ’ charm of the unadorned function and entered into the communion of saints. He strongly dissuaded them from attending Mass; and, from this time forward, this became the mark of thorough and entire religious decision. He did not, however, merely enjoin this, but argued the question out with such disputants as Maitland of Lethington, so that they might have a reason in themselves for the line of conduct they pursued. •’ He left behind him directions for conducting the devotional meetings in which they were to search the Scriptures and edify one another. He was even implored by the female portion of his adherents to guide them as to the garments it would be proper for women professing godliness to wear; and this responsibility he did not decline, his opinion on this ticklish subject being still accessible.^

There had been another reason for this visit of Knox to his native country besides the public one. While engaged as a preacher in Northumberland five years before, he had formed the acquaintance of the family of Richard Bowes, Captain of Norham Castle. With this man’s wife, who was the daughter of Roger Aske, of Aske in Yorkshire, he had formed a close intimacy, acting to her as spiritual guide, she being of a rare intelligence but of a scrupulous conscience and, for this reason, making constant demands upon the sympathy of her friend, who responded to them in a correspondence which forms one of the most characteristic * Works, iv. 225 ff.

portions of his literary legacy. In the course of his intercourse with the mother, he formed an attachment for her daughter Marjory; and, in spite’ of the opposition of her father and some other members of the family, they were engaged to be married before he left England; and now, as he quitted Scotland, to return to Geneva, they were wedded; and he took back with him not her only but Mrs. Bowes as well. This event in Knox’s life did not cause the same amount of scandal as did the marriage of Martin Luther, the world having become accustomed to the spectacle of the marriage of men who had once, as priests or friars, taken the vow of celibacy. He was to give more cause for the derision of the profane when, Marjory Bowes having died in 1560, he married again in 1564, at the age of fifty-nine, his bride being a girl of sixteen or seventeen. By his first wife he had two sons, one of whom became a clergyman in the Church of England, and by the second three daughters, one of whom

became the heroic Mrs. Welsh of Ayr.

For the next three years Knox was minister of the English congregation of Geneva; and this was the most tranquil period of his life. Of the sublime scenery of the Alps he never, indeed, says a word; but such silence was the custom of the age; and he must have felt the influences of nature whether he was conscious of them or not. Of other advantages of his place of abode he was well aware. “I neither fear,” he remarks,” nor

/ jlashame to say that Geneva is the most perfect school

‘lof Christ that ever was in the earth since the days

of the Apostles. In other places I confess Christ

to be truly preached; but manners and religion

so truly reformed I have not yet seen in any

^’ other place.” Such was the result of the vision of a city of God on earth which had formed itself in the mind of Calvin and of the force of will with which that great man had impressed his own ideas on the minds of his fellow-citizens. Knox, along with his colleague Goodman, was admitted to citizenship in 1558. Of actual intercourse of his own with Calvin we have comparatively little record; but the two were so near of kin in spirit and aims that their fellowship must have been close and cordial; and it is delightful to think of these two pacing the margin of the lovely Lake, absorbed in conversation on the highest themes. Though the elder of the two, Knox always speaks I with veneration of his friend, as” that singular instrument of Christ Jesus in the glory of His 1 Works, iv. 240.

Gospel.” “From him,” he adds, “we must confess, except that we would, in concealing the truth, declare ourselves to be unthankful, that we all have received comfort, light and erudition.” Of other persons of culture the city at that time contained not a few; such, for example, as those who were engaged in translating the Geneva Bible; and in Knox’s own congregation there were persons of honour, quality and estate, many of them divines and students of divinity, besides merchants, tradesmen and husbandmen.

In intercourse with friends like these his mind / was stimulated, and he had leisure both to read and think. Hence it is not surprising that it is ’ to these three years that the fullest statements of his opinions, both theological and political, belong. His j.ongest theological production, a treatise on Predestination, was a task imposed on him by the divines with whom he was associated at Geneva, and it was sanctioned by the authorities of that city. The discussion of the subject of which it treated had waxed hot in Switzerland a little earlier; and the author of the English work which Knox was appointed to answer had borrowed his arguments from the opponents of Calvin in that country — Servetus, Bolsec and Castellio. The most * WorkSy V. 169.

.’■^^ notorious political treatise of Knox, on the contrary,, The Monstrous Regiment of Women, was written without consultation with Calvin, and was vigorously repudiated by that divine, when it became apparent how much it was fitted to injure the cause of the Reformation. It was directed against Mary of Lorraine and Bloody Mary; but the latter died immediately after its publication; and Elizabeth, who succeeded, though a Protestant, disliked not only the book itself but the man who had written it, and the city from which it had been issued, almost as much as Mary, had she lived, could have done.

It was actually written at Dieppe, where Knox had arrived in 1557, intending to proceed to Scotland, from which an invitation to return had reached him, signed by several of the most influential of the adherents of the Reformation. But they changed their minds and intercepted him with an order not to come any further, the time being not yet ripe. For weeks he stayed with impatience in the seaport, waiting for further orders; while he waited, the fire burned, and he threw off this unfortunate pamphlet, to relieve his feelings. It brought him subsequently a world of trouble, and he had to try to explain it away both to Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots; but as to the main positions of the book he died impenitent.

It is more pleasant to remember that during the weeks he stayed at Dieppe he preached in the town and may almost be called the founder of the vigorous Protestant Church which subsequently flourished there. He also visited, before returning to Geneva, Rochelle and other Protestant centres in the West of France. Indeed, he was thoroughly familiar with the condition of the French Church, and he translated into English an official account, which the Huguenots had issued, of a cruel massacre of which they had been the victims in Paris. We may close this section of his life with a moving story from this little-known document, or rather from an editorial addition, made by Knox himself: “Among others, God now of late days hath so triumphed in the death of a tender child of sixteen years of age, that the very blind people are compelled to confess that the mighty power of God worketh above nature with the sufferers, and openly fighteth against our enemies. This young gentleman, condemned to be burnt quick, was laid upon a manner of a wheel above the fire, his face upward; but, as God’s good pleasure and providence was, his tongue was not cut out, but a great piece of wood was put in his mouth, bound with a cord behind his neck. When the fire had so long burnt that “rovve.”

the cord was consumed, and so the stick fell forth of his mouth, he began, when no life appeared to have remained, most comfortably to sing the Fortieth Psalm of David, having this beginning: ‘Patiently have I abidden the Lord, who is eternal, and He hath inclined Himself unto me and hath heard my cry. He hath delivered me from the horrible pit, yea, from the pit of dolour, and hath placed my feet upon a sure rock. He hath put a new song in my mouth, yea, a thanksgiving unto our God. Many, seeing this, shall fear the Lord and put their trust in Him. Blessed is the man that setteth his hope on the Lord and turneth not unto the proud and unto such as go about with lies.’ And did so proceed unto the end of the psalm, at the last verse whereof he rendered his spirit, as it had been without pain, to the great and most singular comfort of all faithful, and to the fear, confusion and shame of those cruel tyrants.”

1 Works iv. 301.