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Transcribed from the 1905 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by DavidPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

John Knox and the Reformation

To Maurice Hewlett

PREFACE

In this brief Life of Knox I have tried, as much as I may, to getbehind Tradition, which has so deeply affected even modern historiesof the Scottish Reformation, and even recent Biographies of the Reformer. The tradition is based, to a great extent, on Knox’s own “History,”which I am therefore obliged to criticise as carefully as I can. In his valuable John Knox, a Biography, Professor HumeBrown says that in the “History” “we have convincingproof alike of the writer’s good faith, and of his perceptionof the conditions of historic truth.”  My reasons for dissentingfrom this favourable view will be found in the following pages. If I am right, if Knox, both as a politician and an historian, resembledCharles I. in “sailing as near the wind” as he could, thecircumstance (as another of his biographers remarks) “only makeshim more human and interesting.”

Opinion about Knox and the religious Revolution in which he tookso great a part, has passed through several variations in the last century. In the Edinburgh Review of 1816 (No. liii. pp. 163-180), is anarticle with which the present biographer can agree.  Several passagesfrom Knox’s works are cited, and the reader is expected to be“shocked at their principles.”  They are certainlyshocking, but they are not, as a rule, set before the public by biographersof the Reformer.

Mr. Carlyle introduced a style of thinking about Knox which may becalled platonically Puritan.  Sweet enthusiasts glide swiftly overall in the Reformer that is specially distasteful to us.  I findmyself more in harmony with the outspoken Hallam, Dr. Joseph Robertson,David Hume, and the Edinburgh reviewer of 1816, than with several morerecent students of Knox.

“The Reformer’s violent counsels and intemperate speechwere remarkable,” writes Dr. Robertson, “even in his ownruthless age,” and he gives fourteen examples. {0a} “Lord Hailes has shown,” he adds, “how little Knox’sstatements” (in his “History”) “are to be reliedon even in matters which were within the Reformer’s own knowledge.” In Scotland there has always been the party of Cavalier and White Rosesentimentalism.  To this party Queen Mary is a saintly being, andtheir admiration of Claverhouse goes far beyond that entertained bySir Walter Scott.  On the other side, there is the party, equallysentimental, which musters under the banner of the Covenant, and seesscarcely a blemish in Knox.  A pretty sample of the sentiment ofthis party appears in a biography (1905) of the Reformer by a ministerof the Gospel.  Knox summoned the organised brethren, in 1563,to overawe justice, when some men were to be tried on a charge of invadingin arms the chapel of Holyrood.  No proceeding could be more anarchicthan Knox’s, or more in accordance with the lovable customs ofmy dear country, at that time.  But the biographer of 1905, “aplaced minister,” writes that “the doing of it” (Knox’ssummons) “was only an assertion of the liberty of the Church,and of the members of the Commonwealth as a whole, to assemble for purposeswhich were clearly lawful”—the purposes being to overawejustice in the course of a trial!

On sentiment, Cavalier or Puritan, reason is thrown away.

I have been surprised to find how completely a study of Knox’sown works corroborates the views of Dr. Robertson and Lord Hailes. That Knox ran so very far ahead of the Genevan pontiffs of his age inviolence; and that in his “History” he needs such carefulwatching, was, to me, an unexpected discovery.  He may have been“an old Hebrew prophet,” as Mr. Carlyle says, but he hadalso been a young Scottish notary!  A Hebrew prophet is, at best,a dangerous anachronism in a delicate crisis of the Church Christian;and the notarial element is too conspicuous in some passages of Knox’s“History.”

That Knox was a great man; a disinterested man; in his regard forthe poor a truly Christian man; as a shepherd of Calvinistic souls aman fervent and considerate; of pure life; in friendship loyal; by jealousyuntainted; in private character genial and amiable, I am entirely convinced. In public and political life he was much less admirable; and his “History,”vivacious as it is, must be studied as the work of an old-fashionedadvocate rather than as the summing up of a judge.  His favouriteadjectives are “bloody,” “beastly,” “rotten,”and “stinking.”

Any inaccuracies of my own which may have escaped my correction willbe dwelt on, by enthusiasts for the Prophet, as if they are the mainelements of this book, and disqualify me as a critic of Knox’s“History.”  At least any such errors on my part areinvoluntary and unconscious.  In Knox’s defence we must rememberthat he never saw his “History” in print.  But he keptit by him for many years, obviously re-reading, for he certainly retouchedit, as late as 1571.

In quoting Knox and his contemporaries, I have used modern spelling:the letter from the State Papers printed on pp. 146, 147, shows whatthe orthography of the period was really like.  Consultation ofthe original MSS. on doubtful points, proves that the printed Calendars,though excellent guides, cannot be relied on as authorities.

The portrait of Knox, from Beza’s book of portraits of Reformers,is posthumous, but is probably a good likeness drawn from memory, after