Short Studies on Great Subjects

J >> James Anthony Froude >> Short Studies on Great Subjects

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The commons of Scotland had hitherto been the creatures of the nobles.
They had neither will nor opinion of their own. They thought and acted
in the spirit of their immediate allegiance. No one seems to have dreamt
that there would be any difficulty in dealing with them if once the
great families agreed upon a common course. Yet it appeared, when the
pressure came, that religion, which was the play-thing of the nobles,
was to the people a clear matter of life and death. They might love
their country: they might be proud of anything which would add lustre to
its crown; but if it was to bring back the Pope and Popery--if it
threatened to bring them back--if it looked that way--they would have
nothing to do with it; nor would they allow it to be done. Allegiance
was well enough; but there was a higher allegiance suddenly discovered
which superseded all earthly considerations. I know nothing finer in
Scottish history than the way in which the commons of the Lowlands took
their places by the side of Knox in the great convulsions which
followed. If all others forsook him, they at least would never forsake
him while tongue remained to speak and hand remained to strike. Broken
they might have been, trampled out as the Huguenots at last were
trampled out in France, had Mary Stuart been less than the most
imprudent or the most unlucky of sovereigns. But Providence, or the
folly of those with whom they had to deal, fought for them. I need not
follow the wild story of the crimes and catastrophes in which Mary
Stuart's short reign in Scotland closed. Neither is her own share, be it
great or small, or none at all, in those crimes of any moment to us
here. It is enough that, both before that strange business and after it,
when at Holyrood or across the Border, in Sheffield or Tutbury, her ever
favourite dream was still the English throne. Her road towards it was
through a Catholic revolution and the murder of Elizabeth. It is enough
that, both before and after, the aristocracy of Scotland, even those
among them who had seemed most zealous for the Reformation, were eager
to support her. John Knox alone, and the commons, whom Knox had raised
into a political power, remained true.

Much, indeed, is to be said for the Scotch nobles. In the first shock of
the business at Kirk-o'-Field, they forgot their politics in a sense of
national disgrace. They sent the queen to Loch Leven. They intended to
bring her to trial, and, if she was proved guilty, to expose and perhaps
punish her. All parties for a time agreed in this--even the Hamiltons
themselves; and had they been left alone they would have done it. But
they had a perverse neighbour in England, to whom crowned heads were
sacred. Elizabeth, it might have been thought, would have had no
particular objection; but Elizabeth had aims of her own which baffled
calculation. Elizabeth, the representative of revolution, yet detested
revolutionists. The Reformers in Scotland, the Huguenots in France, the
insurgents in the United Provinces, were the only friends she had in
Europe. For her own safety she was obliged to encourage them; yet she
hated them all, and would at any moment have abandoned them all, if, in
any other way, she could have secured herself. She might have conquered
her personal objection to Knox--she could not conquer her aversion to a
Church which rose out of revolt against authority, which was democratic
in constitution and republican in politics. When driven into alliance
with the Scotch Protestants, she angrily and passionately disclaimed any
community of creed with them; and for subjects to sit in judgment on
their prince was a precedent which she would not tolerate. Thus she
flung her mantle over Mary Stuart. She told the Scotch Council here in
Edinburgh that, if they hurt a hair of her head, she would harry their
country, and hang them all on the trees round the town, if she could
find any trees there for that purpose. She tempted the queen to England
with her fair promises after the battle of Langside, and then, to her
astonishment, imprisoned her. Yet she still shielded her reputation,
still fostered her party in Scotland, still incessantly threatened and
incessantly endeavoured to restore her. She kept her safe, because, in
her lucid intervals, her ministers showed her the madness of acting
otherwise. Yet for three years she kept her own people in a fever of
apprehension. She made a settled Government in Scotland impossible;
till, distracted and perplexed, the Scottish statesmen went back to
their first schemes. They assured themselves that in one way or other
the Queen of Scots would sooner or later come again among them. They,
and others besides them, believed that Elizabeth was cutting her own
throat, and that the best that they could do was to recover their own
queen's favour, and make the most of her and her titles; and so they
lent themselves again to the English Catholic conspiracies.

The Earl of Moray--the one supremely noble man then living in the
country--was put out of the way by an assassin. French and Spanish money
poured in, and French and Spanish armies were to be again invited over
to Scotland. This is the form in which the drama unfolds itself in the
correspondence of the time. Maitland, the soul and spirit of it all,
said, in scorn, that 'he would make the Queen of England sit upon her
tail and whine like a whipped dog.' The only powerful noblemen who
remained on the Protestant side were Lennox, Morton, and Mar. Lord
Lennox was a poor creature, and was soon dispatched; Mar was old and
weak; and Morton was an unprincipled scoundrel, who used the Reformation
only as a stalking-horse to cover the spoils which he had clutched in
the confusion, and was ready to desert the cause at any moment if the
balance of advantage shifted. Even the ministers of the Kirk were fooled
and flattered over. Maitland told Mary Stuart that he had gained them
all except one.

John Knox alone defied both his threats and his persuasions. Good reason
has Scotland to be proud of Knox. He only, in this wild crisis, saved
the Kirk which he had founded, and saved with it Scottish and English
freedom. But for Knox, and what he was able still to do, it is almost
certain that the Duke of Alva's army would have been landed on the
eastern coast. The conditions were drawn out and agreed upon for the
reception, the support, and the stay of the Spanish troops. Two-thirds
of the English peerage had bound themselves to rise against Elizabeth,
and Alva waited only till Scotland itself was quiet. Only that quiet
would not be. Instead of quiet came three dreadful years of civil war.
Scotland was split into factions, to which the mother and son gave
names. The queen's lords, as they were called, with unlimited money from
France and Flanders, held Edinburgh and Glasgow; all the border line was
theirs, and all the north and west. Elizabeth's Council, wiser than
their mistress, barely squeezed out of her reluctant parsimony enough to
keep Mar and Morton from making terms with the rest; but there her
assistance ended. She would still say nothing, promise nothing, bind
herself to nothing, and, so far as she was concerned, the war would have
been soon enough brought to a close. But away at St. Andrews, John Knox,
broken in body, and scarcely able to stagger up the pulpit stairs, still
thundered in the parish church; and his voice, it was said, was like ten
thousand trumpets braying in the ear of Scottish Protestantism. All the
Lowlands answered to his call. Our English Cromwell found in the man of
religion a match for the man of honour. Before Cromwell, all over the
Lothians, and across from St. Andrews to Stirling and Glasgow--through
farm, and town, and village--the words of Knox had struck the inmost
chords of the Scottish commons' hearts. Passing over knight and noble,
he had touched the farmer, the peasant, the petty tradesman, and the
artisan, and turned the men of clay into men of steel. The village
preacher, when he left his pulpit, doffed cap and cassock, and donned
morion and steel-coat. The Lothian yeoman's household became for the
nonce a band of troopers, who would cross swords with the night riders
of Buccleuch. It was a terrible time, a time rather of anarchy than of
defined war, for it was without form or shape. Yet the horror of it was
everywhere. Houses and villages were burned, and women and children
tossed on pike-point into the flames. Strings of poor men were dangled
day after day from the walls of Edinburgh Castle. A word any way from
Elizabeth would have ended it, but that word Elizabeth would never
speak; and, maddened with suffering, the people half believed that she
was feeding the fire for her own bad purposes, when it was only that she
would not make up her mind to allow a crowned princess to be dethroned.
No earthly influence could have held men true in such a trial. The noble
lords--the Earl of Morton and such-like--would have made their own
conditions, and gone with the rest; but the vital force of the Scotch
nation, showing itself where it was least looked for, would not have it
so.

A very remarkable account of the state of the Scotch commons at this
time is to be found in a letter of an English emissary, who had been
sent by Lord Burleigh to see how things were going there. It was not
merely a new creed that they had got; it was a new vital power. 'You
would be astonished to see how men are changed here,' this writer said.
'There is little of that submission to those above them which there used
to be. The poor think and act for themselves. They are growing strong,
confident, independent. The farms are better cultivated; the farmers are
growing rich. The merchants at Leith are thriving, and, notwithstanding
the pirates, they are increasing their ships and opening a brisk trade
with France.'

All this while civil war was raging, and the flag of Queen Mary was
still floating over Edinburgh Castle. It surprised the English; still
more it surprised the politicians. It was the one thing which
disconcerted, baffled, and finally ruined the schemes and the dreams of
Maitland. When he had gained the aristocracy, he thought that he had
gained everybody, and, as it turned out, he had all his work still to
do. The Spaniards did not come. The prudent Alva would not risk invasion
till Scotland at least was assured. As time passed on, the English
conspiracies were discovered and broken up. The Duke of Norfolk lost his
head; the Queen of Scots was found to have been mixed up with the plots
to murder Elizabeth; and Elizabeth at last took courage and recognised
James. Supplies of money ceased to come from abroad, and gradually the
tide turned. The Protestant cause once more grew towards the ascendant.
The great families one by one came round again; and, as the backward
movement began, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew gave it a fresh and
tremendous impulse. Even the avowed Catholics--the Hamiltons, the
Gordons, the Scotts, the Kers, the Maxwells--quailed before the wail of
rage and sorrow which at that great horror rose over their country. The
Queen's party dwindled away to a handful of desperate politicians, who
still clung to Edinburgh Castle. But Elizabeth's 'peace-makers,' as the
big English cannon were called, came round, at the Regent's request,
from Berwick; David's tower, as Knox had long ago foretold, 'ran down
over the cliff like a sandy brae;' and the cause of Mary Stuart in
Scotland was extinguished for ever. Poor Grange, who deserved a better
end, was hanged at the Market Cross. Secretary Maitland, the cause of
all the mischief--the cleverest man, as far as intellect went, in all
Britain--died (so later rumour said) by his own hand. A nobler version
of his end is probably a truer one: He had been long ill--so ill that
when the Castle cannon were fired, he had been carried into the cellars
as unable to bear the sound. The breaking down of his hopes finished
him. 'The secretary,' wrote some one from the spot to Cecil, 'is dead of
grief, being unable to endure the great hatred which all this people
bears towards him.' It would be well if some competent man would write a
life of Maitland, or at least edit his papers. They contain by far the
clearest account of the inward movements of the time; and he himself is
one of the most tragically interesting characters in the cycle of the
Reformation history.

With the fall of the Castle, then, but not till then, it became clear to
all men that the Reformation would hold its ground. It was the final
trampling out of the fire which for five years had threatened both
England and Scotland with flames and ruin. For five years--as late
certainly as the massacre of St. Bartholomew--those who understood best
the true state of things, felt the keenest misgivings how the event
would turn. That things ended as they did was due to the spirit of the
Scotch commons. There was a moment when, if they had given way, all
would have gone, perhaps even to Elizabeth's throne. They had passed for
nothing; they had proved to be everything; had proved--the ultimate test
in human things--to be the power which could hit the hardest blows, and
they took rank accordingly. The creed began now in good earnest to make
its way into hall and castle; but it kept the form which it assumed in
the first hours of its danger and trial, and never after lost it. Had
the aristocracy dealt sincerely with things in the earlier stages of the
business, again I say the democratic element in the Kirk might have been
softened or modified. But the Protestants had been trifled with by their
own natural leaders. Used and abused by Elizabeth, despised by the
worldly intelligence and power of the times--they triumphed after all,
and, as a natural consequence, they set their own mark and stamp upon
the fruits of the victory.

The question now is, what has the Kirk so established done for Scotland?
Has it justified its own existence? Briefly, we might say, it has
continued its first function as the guardian of Scottish freedom. But
that is a vague phrase, and there are special accusations against the
Kirk and its doctrines which imply that it has cared for other things
than freedom. Narrow, fanatical, dictatorial, intrusive, superstitious,
a spiritual despotism, the old priesthood over again with a new
face--these and other such epithets and expressions we have heard often
enough applied to it at more than one stage of its history. Well, I
suppose that neither the Kirk nor anything else of man's making is
altogether perfect. But let us look at the work which lay before it when
it had got over its first perils. Scotch patriotism succeeded at last in
the object it had so passionately set its heart upon. It sent a king at
last of the Scotch blood to England, and a new dynasty; and it never
knew peace or quiet after. The Kirk had stood between James Stuart and
his kingcraft. He hated it as heartily as did his mother; and, when he
got to England, he found people there who told him it would be easy to
destroy it, and he found the strength of a fresh empire to back him in
trying to do it. To have forced prelacy upon Scotland would have been to
destroy the life out of Scotland. Thrust upon them by force, it would
have been no more endurable than Popery. They would as soon, perhaps
sooner, have had what the Irish call the 'rale thing' back again. The
political freedom of the country was now wrapped up in the Kirk; and the
Stuarts were perfectly well aware of that, and for that very reason
began their crusade against it.

And now, suppose the Kirk had been the broad, liberal, philosophical,
intellectual thing which some people think it ought to have been, how
would it have fared in that crusade; how altogether would it have
encountered those surplices of Archbishop Laud or those dragoons of
Claverhouse? It is hard to lose one's life for a 'perhaps,' and
philosophical belief at the bottom means a 'perhaps' and nothing more.
For more than half the seventeenth century, the battle had to be fought
out in Scotland, which in reality was the battle between liberty and
despotism; and where, except in an intense, burning conviction that they
were maintaining God's cause against the devil, could the poor Scotch
people have found the strength for the unequal struggle which was forced
upon them? Toleration is a good thing in its place; but you cannot
tolerate what will not tolerate you, and is trying to cut your throat.
Enlightenment you cannot have enough of, but it must be true
enlightenment, which sees a thing in all its bearings. In these matters
the vital questions are not always those which appear on the surface;
and in the passion and resolution of brave and noble men there is often
an inarticulate intelligence deeper than what can be expressed in words.
Action sometimes will hit the mark, when the spoken word either misses
it or is but half the truth. On such subjects, and with common men,
latitude of mind means weakness of mind. There is but a certain quantity
of spiritual force in any man. Spread it over a broad surface, the
stream is shallow and languid; narrow the channel, and it becomes a
driving force. Each may be well at its own time. The mill-race which
drives the water-wheel is dispersed in rivulets over the meadow at its
foot. The Covenanters fought the fight and won the victory, and then,
and not till then, came the David Humes with their essays on miracles,
and the Adam Smiths with their political economies, and steam-engines,
and railroads, and philosophical institutions, and all the other blessed
or unblessed fruits of liberty.

But we may go further. Institutions exist for men, not men for
institutions; and the ultimate test of any system of politics, or body
of opinions, or form of belief, is the effect produced on the conduct
and condition of the people who live and die under them. Now, I am not
here to speak of Scotland of the present day. That, happily, is no
business of mine. We have to do here with Scotland before the march of
intellect; with Scotland of the last two centuries; with the three or
four hundred thousand families, who for half-a-score of generations
believed simply and firmly in the principles of the Reformation, and
walked in the ways of it.

Looked at broadly, one would say they had been an eminently pious
people. It is part of the complaint of modern philosophers about them,
that religion, or superstition, or whatever they please to call it, had
too much to do with their daily lives. So far as one can look into that
commonplace round of things which historians never tell us about, there
have rarely been seen in this world a set of people who have thought
more about right and wrong, and the judgment about them of the upper
powers. Long-headed, thrifty industry,--a sound hatred of waste,
imprudence, idleness, extravagance,--the feet planted firmly upon the
earth,--a conscientious sense that the worldly virtues are,
nevertheless, very necessary virtues, that without these, honesty for
one thing is not possible, and that without honesty no other excellence,
religious or moral, is worth anything at all--this is the stuff of which
Scotch life was made, and very good stuff it is. It has been called
gloomy, austere, harsh, and such other epithets. A gifted modern writer
has favoured us lately with long strings of extracts from the sermons of
Scotch divines of the last century, taking hard views of human
shortcomings and their probable consequences, and passing hard censures
upon the world and its amusements. Well, no doubt amusement is a very
good thing; but I should rather infer from the vehemence and frequency
of these denunciations that the people had not been in the habit of
denying themselves too immoderately; and, after all, it is no very hard
charge against those teachers that they thought more of duty than of
pleasure. Sermons always exaggerate the theoretic side of things; and
the most austere preacher, when he is out of the pulpit, and you meet
him at the dinner-table, becomes singularly like other people. We may
take courage, I think, we may believe safely that in those
minister-ridden days, men were not altogether so miserable; we may hope
that no large body of human beings have for any length of time been too
dangerously afraid of enjoyment. Among other good qualities, the Scots
have been distinguished for humour--not for venomous wit, but for
kindly, genial humour, which half loves what it laughs at--and this
alone shows clearly enough that those to whom it belongs have not looked
too exclusively on the gloomy side of the world. I should rather say
that the Scots had been an unusually happy people. Intelligent industry,
the honest doing of daily work, with a sense that it must be done well,
under penalties; the necessaries of life moderately provided for; and a
sensible content with the situation of life in which men are born--this
through the week, and at the end of it the 'Cottar's Saturday
Night'--the homely family, gathered reverently and peacefully together,
and irradiated with a sacred presence.--Happiness! such happiness as we
human creatures are likely to know upon this world, will be found there,
if anywhere.

The author of the 'History of Civilisation' makes a naive remark in
connexion with this subject. Speaking of the other country, which he
censures equally with Scotland for its slavery to superstition, he says
of the Spaniards that they are a well-natured, truthful, industrious,
temperate, pious people, innocent in their habits, affectionate in their
families, full of humour, vivacity, and shrewdness, yet that all this
'has availed them nothing'--'has availed them nothing,' that is his
expression--because they are loyal, because they are credulous, because
they are contented, because they have not apprehended the first
commandment of the new covenant: 'Thou shalt get on and make money, and
better thy condition in life;' because, therefore, they have added
nothing to the scientific knowledge, the wealth, and the progress of
mankind. Without these, it seems, the old-fashioned virtues avail
nothing. They avail a great deal to human happiness. Applied science,
and steam, and railroads, and machinery, enable an ever-increasing
number of people to live upon the earth; but the happiness of those
people remains, so far as I know, dependent very much on the old
conditions. I should be glad to believe that the new views of things
will produce effects upon the character in the long run half so
beautiful.

There is much more to say on this subject, were there time to say it,
but I will not trespass too far upon your patience; and I would gladly
have ended here, had not the mention of Spain suggested one other topic,
which I should not leave unnoticed. The Spain of Cervantes and Don
Quixote was the Spain of the Inquisition. The Scotland of Knox and
Melville was the Scotland of the witch trials and witch burnings. The
belief in witches was common to all the world. The prosecution and
punishment of the poor creatures was more conspicuous in Scotland when
the Kirk was most powerful; in England and New England, when Puritan
principles were also dominant there. It is easy to understand the
reasons. Evil of all kinds was supposed to be the work of a personal
devil; and in the general horror of evil, this particular form of it,
in which the devil was thought especially active, excited the most
passionate detestation. Thus, even the best men lent themselves
unconsciously to the most detestable cruelty. Knox himself is not free
from reproach. A poor woman was burned at St. Andrews when he was living
there, and when a word from him would have saved her. It remains a
lesson to all time, that goodness, though the indispensable adjunct to
knowledge, is no substitute for it; that when conscience undertakes to
dictate beyond its province, the result is only the more monstrous.

It is well that we should look this matter in the face; and as
particular stories leave more impression than general statements, I will
mention one, perfectly well authenticated, which I take from the
official report of the proceedings:--Towards the end of 1593 there was
trouble in the family of the Earl of Orkney. His brother laid a plot to
murder him, and was said to have sought the help of a 'notorious witch'
called Alison Balfour. When Alison Balfour's life was looked into, no
evidence could be found connecting her either with the particular
offence or with witchcraft in general; but it was enough in these
matters to be accused. She swore she was innocent; but her guilt was
only held to be aggravated by perjury. She was tortured again and again.
Her legs were put in the caschilaws--an iron frame which was gradually
heated till it burned into the flesh--but no confession could be wrung
from her. The caschilaws failed utterly, and something else had to be
tried. She had a husband, a son, and a daughter, a child seven years
old. As her own sufferings did not work upon her, she might be touched,
perhaps, by the sufferings of those who were dear to her. They were
brought into court, and placed at her side; and the husband first was
placed in the 'lang irons'--some accursed instrument; I know not what.
Still the devil did not yield. She bore this; and her son was next
operated on. The boy's legs were set in 'the boot,'--the iron boot you
may have heard of. The wedges were driven in, which, when forced home,
crushed the very bone and marrow. Fifty-seven mallet strokes were
delivered upon the wedges. Yet this, too, failed. There was no
confession yet. So, last of all, the little daughter was taken. There
was a machine called the piniwinkies--a kind of thumbscrew, which
brought blood from under the finger nails, with a pain successfully
terrible. These things were applied to the poor child's hands, and the
mother's constancy broke down, and she said she would admit anything
they wished. She confessed her witchcraft--so tried, she would have
confessed to the seven deadly sins--and then she was burned, recalling
her confession, and with her last breath protesting her innocence.

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