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Fifth Series, Volume LXII.

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No. 2286.-April 21, 1888.

From Beginning,
Vol. CLXXVII.

CONTENTS.

I. MARY STUART IN SCOTLAND. Part II., Blackwood's Magazine,

II. THE SPANISH COLLEGE IN THE UNIVER

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Macmillan's Magazine,
Fortnightly Review,

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Spectator,

184

Times,
Spectator,

187

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Daily News,
Standard,

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Punch,

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XV. MR. PUNCH'S EXAMINATION PAPERS FOR
YOUNG PEOPLE,

Gentleman's Magazine,
Nature,

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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

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From Blackwood's Magazine.
MARY STUART IN SCOTLAND.

JOHN KNOX AND WILLIAM MAITLAND.

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ing afraid beyond measure," was nothing abashed. "When it shall please God," he told the queen, "to deliver you from that bondage of darkness and error in the which you have been nourished, your Majesty will find the liberty of my tongue nothing offensive."

These and the like scenes were not calculated to lessen the friction between the courtiers and the preachers, between Maitland and Knox. Knox was implacable, and no entreaties, no considerations of policy or expediency, would induce him to moderate the vehemence of his "railings," or the directness of his "applications." It was after one of these characteristic outbursts that Lethington, we are told, “in open audience gave himself unto the devill" if ever from that day he should regard what became of the ministers.

THE queen's growing popularity with her subjects was wormwood to Knox. While the preachers were everywhere denouced as "railers," Mary's conciliatory policy was as widely approved. When she opened the Parliament of 1563, she received, as she rode from Holyrood to the Tolbooth, an enthusiastic welcome from the citizens of the capital. Such stinking pride of women as was seen at that Parliament, was never seen before in Scotland. Three sundry days the queen rode to the Tolbooth. The first day she made a painted oration; and there micht have been heard among her flatterers, 'Vox Diana! The voice of a goddess and not of a woman! God save that sweet face! Was" And let them bark and blaw," he added, there ever orator spak so properlie and so as loud as they list." The breach besweetly?" To flatter a woman, and that tween the two factions was complete. woman a queen and a Catholic, was a dire Knox thundered against the Protestant offence in Knox's eyes; and he took a apostates; while Maitland's mocking recharacteristic revenge by abusing the tort, "We must recant and burn our bill, fashion of her petticoats. "All things for the preachers are angry," added fuel to misliking the preachers," we are told, the flame. We need not wonder that a "they spak boldly against the tarjetting of politic statesman who had all along been their tails" some mysterious device of anxiously working for concord should the feminine toilet, which, they ex- have been bitterly mortified by what he pected, would "provoke God's vengeance must have regarded as gross and criminal not only against those foolish women, but indiscretion; but it was not until he had against the whole realm which allowed convinced himself that Knox was irreconsuch odious abusing of things that might cilable, and that it was impossible on any have been better bestowed." Mary, as we terms to win him to a happier and less know, was being wooed by France, Aus- combative mood, that he gave unrestrained tria, and Spain; and before the Parlia- expression to his displeasure. "The sement adjourned, Knox delivered a rousing cretar burst out in a piece of his choler." discourse against her marriage with an One more attempt was made by the ecinfidel. "Whensoever," he declared, "the clesiastical courts, before the Darnley nobility of Scotland, professing the Lord marriage, to deprive Mary of her mass. Jesus, consents that an infidel (and all The General Assembly in the summer of Papists are infidels) shall be head to your 1565 presented a petition to her requiring sovereign, ye do as far as in ye lieth to that "the Papistical and blasphemous banish Christ Jesus from this realm." Mass" "be universally suppressed and Mary was very indignant, and Protestant abolished throughout the realm, not only and Catholic alike were offended, "this in the subjects but also in the Queen's manner of speaking being judged intolerable." Knox was again summoned to the palace, where the queen, moved to tears, reproached him for his harshness. But the sturdy divine, who had looked many angry men in the face, as he said, "without be

Majesty's own person." Mary returned a dignified answer. She could not forsake the religion in which she had been brought up, and which she believed to be well grounded—"beseeching all her loving subjects (seeing that they have had expe

rience of her goodness, that she neither | lowed a more successful method than he hath in times by-past, nor yet meaneth adopted. We must remember, however, hereafter, to press the conscience of any that the phrase "mistaken opinions," as man, but to suffer them to worship God used by us, was incomprehensible to in such sort as they are persuaded to be Knox. The mass was idolatry, idolatry best), that they will not press her to offend was crime, and the people and rulers who her own conscience." To Mary's ill-timed refused to inflict the punishments which and premature plea for toleration (as such God had attached to crime, would themwe are now taught to regard it by men selves be punished. "In the northland who are clamorous for religious equality), where the autumn before the queen had Knox, from the pulpit of St. Giles', replied travelled, there was ane extreme famine, with characteristic vigor and promptitude. in the quhilk many died in that country. Darnley had come to hear the sermon in The dearth was great over all, but the the Protestant sanctuary on Sunday, 19th famine was principally there. And so all August three weeks after he was mar- things appertaining to the sustentation of ried. The text was taken from Isaiah: man, in triple and more, exceeded their "O Lord our God, other lords than Thou accustomed prices. And so did God, achave ruled over us ;" and the appropriate | cording to the threatening of his law, application was duly made. God had punish the idolatry of our wicked queen. given the government of the realm to For the riotous feasting and excess"boys and women" to rebuke the people ive banqueting wheresoever that wicked for their iniquity and ingratitude; and if woman repaired, provoked God to strike order was not taken with "that harlot the staff of bread, and to give his maleJesabel," the vials of the divine wrath diction upon the fruits of the earth.” would be emptied upon the land. Knox "God from heaven and upon the face of had become so used to strong language, the earth gave declaration that He was as the opium-eater becomes used to an offended at the iniquity that was commitimmoderate quantity of his drug, that heted even within this realm; for upon the failed to appreciate its effect upon persons who were unfamiliar with his uncourtly candor. It may have been the language, or it may have been the length of the sermon; but Darnley at any rate, we are told, was profoundly annoyed. The author of the "Diurnal of Occurrents" says only, "Whereat the king was crabbit;" but Knox's own version supplies some amusing details. "And because he had tarried an hour and more longer than the time appointed, the king, sitting in a throne made for the occasion, was so moved at this sermon that he would not dine; and being troubled, with great fury, he passed in the afternoon to the hawking."

The vehemence of Knox, however, must not be confounded, as it has sometimes been, with deliberate rudeness or boorish disrespect; an entire absence of sound judgment, charity, and tact is the worst that can be laid to his charge. His missionary zeal was untempered by apostolic discretion. Yet the effect was the same - had he desired to confirm Mary in her mistaken opinions, he could not have fol

20th day of Januare there fell weit in great abundance, quhilk in the falling freizit so vehemently that the earth was but ane sheet of ice. And in that same month the sea stood still, and neither flowed nor ebbit the space of 24 hours. These things were not only observed," Knox adds, "but also spoken and constantly affirmed by men of judgment and credit." The effect of this fantastical fanaticism upon a proud and high-spirited woman may be easily guessed. Knox was the foremost of the Reformers; yet Mary had found that Knox was narrow-minded, superstitious, and fiercely intolerant, - so narrow-minded, intolerant, and superstitious that he had no difficulty in believing that the orderly course of nature was interrupted because the queen dined on wild fowl and nced till midnight. If this was Protestantism, she would have none of it. Nor can we blame her much. The ecclesiastical dictator at Edinburgh was as violent and irrational (it might well appear to her) as the ecclesiastical dictator at Rome. Was it worth her while to exchange the infallible

pope of the Vatican for the infallible pope of the High Street?

| inquired, with significant emphasis. The answer was, "All the godly." "Will the IV. In a theocratic society the Church Duke?" (Lethington had been apprised, and the State are one; and the prophet of no doubt, that the Hamiltons were now the Israelitish records is a lawgiver, a unfriendly.) "If he will not," Lord Ochilmagistrate, and a politician, as well as a tree replied, "I would that he was preacher. Knox's notions of government scrapped out, not only of that book, but were taken from the Old Testament. also out of our number and company." Maitland, on the other hand, was a secular statesman, who steadily resisted the intrusion of the Church into civil affairs. We have already had a sample of the wares in Knox's wallet; and the briefest narrative of his controversies with Maitland will serve to show that the Hebrew prophet is an unmanageable element in modern society, and that the application of the principles which Knox asserted and Maitland resisted must lead directly to anarchy.

But Ochiltree appears to have had no support among the "worldlings," and after an angry speech from Knox, Lethington told him plainly that the discussion need not be protracted: "Stand content, that book will not be obtained."

The penalties against Popery were, as we have seen, extraordinarily harsh. The Catholics had looked forward to Mary's return, hoping that with her help the severity of the acts might be relaxed; but they were disappointed. We learn from We have seen that from the day the one of Maitland's earlier letters that the new religious society was instituted Mait-penal statutes had been rigorously enland openly opposed the inordinate pre- forced, and that in point of fact the Popish tensions of the preachers. He had said priests were in worse plight than before. "in mockage," when Knox's special and Maitland, for reasons to which I have vehement application of the prophet Hag- already adverted, was distinctly in favor geus was being addressed to the Parlia- of a lenient administration of the law, and ment of 1560, "We mon now forget our- we find the Reformers complaining on selves, and beir the barrow to build the more than one occasion that the secretary houses of God." He had declared again was not a keen persecutor. Knox, allud - with his usual verbal felicity that the ing to a prosecution which was begun Book of Discipline was "a devout imag- when Maitland was in France, observes ination,” — meaning probably that such a that the queen asked counsel of the old code of exact and salutary discipline might laird of Lethington, "for the younger was suit the civitas Dei when it came to be absent, and so the Protestants had the established, but was ill adapted for any fewer unfriends;" and it is quite true that existing society. Knox was anxious that during the latter years of the Lethington the treaties should be ratified by the Es- administration the penalties inflicted upon tates; Maitland, on the other hand, was those who adhered to the ancient faith resolved that no parliamentary sanction were comparatively light. On the other should be given. It had been signed in-hand, he regarded the seditious doctrines formally in 1560, Knox being urgent, by which were aired in the pulpit of St. Giles' some of the lords of the congregation; but it would appear that later on they had come to be of opinion that they had acted unadvisedly; and Lethington's plea, addressed to the members of the Assembly of 1561, that subscription had been a formal act, which meant little cr nothing "many subscribed in fide parentum, as the bairns are baptized seems to have satisfied most of the lords who were present. "How many of those that signed that book would be subject to it?" he

with marked disfavor. The preachers declared that they held a civil as well as a divine commission, a secular as well as a spiritual warrant. They were above the law when the law was in their judgment unjust. They prayed for the queen as “a thrall and bondwoman of Satan," and for the rebel lords as "the best part of the nobility." A religious festival not uncommonly developed into a political saturnalia. The first public fast of the Reformed Church was held during the week for

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