JAMES' RESISTANCE TO THE REFORMATION

[1528-1540 A.D.]

The same horrible mode of punishment undergone by Lady Glammis was during James' reign unsparingly applied to the restraint of heresy. In the year 1528 a young man of good birth, named Patrick Hamilton,' the first person who introduced the doctrines of Luther's reformation into Scotland, sealed them by his violent death which took place at St. Andrews. The king, being then under the tutelage of the Douglases, cannot be charged with this act of cruelty; but the execution of seven persons in the year 1539 attested his assent to these bloody and impolitic inflictions. It is however certain, that in permitting the established laws of the realm to have their course, James by no means appeared satisfied either with the frequent repetition of such exhibitions or with the conduct of the churchmen themselves. He evinced in several particulars a bias favourable to the reformed doctrines; and his uncle, Henry VIII, confiding in these hopeful indications, continued to entertain considerable hopes of drawing over his nephew to follow his own example.

Sir Ralph Sadler, a statesman of great talent and no stranger to Scotland, was despatched with a present of some horses and the delicate task of prevailing on James to dismiss such of his ministers as were Catholic priests, especially Cardinal David Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews, and of exhorting him at the same time to seize on the property of the church and to reform the morals of the churchmen by severe correction. The old proposal of a personal conference was again renewed.

King James answered with mildness to the urgency of his uncle. He declared that he would reform the abuses of the church, but that he could not justly or conscientiously make these a pretext for seizing on its property, especially since the churchmen were willing to supply him with such sums of money as he from time to time required. The candour of Sadler owned to his master that the king of Scotland was obliged to make use of the clergy in the public service, owing to the ignorance and incapacity of his nobility.

During all these transactions the personal character of James V appears in a favourable light. He did not, indeed, escape the charge of severity usually brought against princes who endeavour to restore the current of justice to its proper channel after it has been for some time interrupted. But his reign was distinguished by acts of personal intrepidity on the part of the sovereign, as well as by an economical and sage management of the revenues of the kingdom. James encouraged fisheries, wrought mines, cultivated waste lands, and understood and protected commerce. The palaces which he built are in a beautiful though singular style of architecture; and the productions of his mint, particularly that called the bonnet-piece, because it bears James' head surmounted by the national cap, is the most elegant specimen of gold coinage which the age affords. The sculptor of the die was probably some foreign medallist whom James had induced to settle in Scotland, and who died young. Had so excellent an artist lived for any considerable period he must have distinguished himself.

James, in proportion to his means, was liberal to foreign mechanics, by whose aid he hoped to encourage the arts among his ignorant people. The court of Scotland was gay and filled with persons of accomplishment. Himself a poet, the king gave all liberal indulgence to the Muses, and does not seem to have resented the shafts of satire which were sometimes aimed against the royal gallantries or the royal parsimony.

['So John Knox credits Hamilton with starting the Reformation in Scotland.]

[1540-1541 A.D.]

With many virtues James V displayed few faults, but these were of a fatal character. The license which he gave to the vindictive persecution of the Protestants seems to have originated in that personal severity of temper already noticed. His inexorable hatred of the Douglases partakes of the same character.

In 1540 James V undertook an expedition truly worthy of a patriotic sovereign, making, with a strong fleet and a sufficient body of troops, a circumnavigation of his whole realm of Scotland, acquainting himself with the various islands, harbours, capes, currents, and tides. In the Hebrides he took hostages from the most turbulent chiefs for the quiet behaviour of their clans, which bore in general the same denominations which they have at this day, as Macdonalds, McLeods, McLeans,

Mackenzies, and others. In this expedition the king showed to the most remote part of his dominions the presence of their sovereign in a position both willing and able to support the dignity of the crown and the due administration of justice, striking a salutary terror into those heads of clans who were unwilling to acknowledge a higher authority than their own. James sailed from Leith on this praiseworthy expedition about the 22nd of May, and landed at Dumbarton in the course of July, 1540, after a voyage which in that early state of navigation was not without its dangers.

In 1541 James met with a great and poignant family affliction. The two male infants born to him by his wife, Mary of Guise, or Lorraine, were both cut off by sudden illness within a few days of each other. The Protestants recorded this as a judgment against the king for permitting the persecution of their faith, and their writers record an ominous dream of the king, in which the spectre of Sir James Hamilton [recently put to death for an alleged plot] appeared to James in the visions of the night, and striking off his two arms while he upbraided him with his cruelty, announced that he would speedily return and take his head. The superstition of Mary of Lorraine, a devoted daughter of the church of Rome, took a different direction; and the king might perhaps agree with her and the priests in concluding that their family calamity arose from the vengeance of heaven expressed against him for his slowness in extirpating heresy. At least, from the tenour of his measures at this time, such seems to have been his own interpretation of this severe visitation.

The statute-book at this period contains various severe denunciations against heresy. To argue against the pope's authority is declared punishable with death, and all discussion on the subject of religion is as far as possible prohibited. Suspected heretics are declared incapable of exercising any office;

[1541-1542 A.D.] nay, such as may even have abjured their errors of faith are still to remain excluded from conversation with Catholics. Fugitives for their religious opinions are held as condemned; all correspondence with them is prohibited, and rewards are offered for their discovery.

These severe penal enactments sufficiently show the sense of Cardinal Beaton their author, that the Protestant opinions were penetrating deeply into Scotland, and could in his opinion only be eradicated by the most active measures. But in proportion as the severity increased the prohibited doctrines seemed to gain ground; and the Scottish clergymen saw no remedy except in the dangerous expedient of engaging James V in a war with England, the monarch of which kingdom had led the way in the great northern schism of the church.

WAR WITH HENRY VIII

The situation of James V now became extremely critical. Whatever might be the king's own moderation, there seemed almost an impossibility of his remaining neutral while France and England were hastening to a rupture; and there were weighty reasons for dreading the consequences whichever party he might embrace. If he became the close and inseparable ally of his uncle he must comply with that impetuous prince in all his humours, alter the religious constitution of his country after the example of England, confiscate the possessions of the church to the prejudice of his own ideas of religion and justice, and discharge Beaton and other counsellors by whose experienced talents he had hitherto conducted his administration.

He felt also that these sacrifices which must necessarily cost him the esteem and the alliance both of France and of Germany would be made for the chance of securing the doubtful friendship of an uncle who, amid all his professions of friendship, had constantly maintained within his kingdom the exiled family of Douglas, whom James not only peculiarly hated, but whom, from their extensive connections in Scotland, he had some reason to dread.

The king was warmly urged by a new embassy from Henry VIII to come to a decisive conclusion on these difficult points when, worn out by importunity, he gave a doubtful promise, that if the affairs of his kingdom permitted, he would meet his uncle at York for the purpose of arranging an amicable settlement. Henry, who thought highly of his own arts of eloquence and persuasion and who appears to have founded extravagant hopes on the influence which he might expect to gain by this personal interview, repaired to York and remained there for six days, expecting the arrival of King James. The king of Scotland, however, aware that to meet Henry without being prepared to concede to him everything which he desired would only precipitate a rupture, excused himself for not attending upon the conference; and Henry returned to London personally offended with James and eagerly desirous of revenge. The chastisement of the king of Scotland became now as favourite an object with Henry as the conversion of James to his own opinions on religion and politics had previously been.

At length, after a variety of petty incursions, the war broke out openly in 1542; and Sir Robert Bowes, with the banished Douglases, entered Scotland at the head of three thousand cavalry. They were encountered near Haddonrig by the earl of Huntly, to whom James had intrusted the defence of the border. The English were defeated, and left their general and many inferior leaders prisoners in the hands of their enemies. Angus himself would have shared the same fate, but he rid himself of the knight who laid hands on him by employing his dagger.

[1542 A.D.]

James was highly encouraged by this fortunate commencement of the campaign; but he was now doomed to find that he had made shipwreck of his popularity in lending his countenance to the severities against the heretics and in excluding from his favour the nobility of the kingdom. The presence of an English army under the duke of Norfolk, which, entering the Scottish frontier, had burned the towns of Kelso and Roxburgh and nearly twenty villages, compelled him to summon an army to repel the invasion.

THE MUTINY AT FALA MOOR; SOLWAY MOSS, AND THE DEATH OF JAMES V (1542 A.D.)

The Scottish king assembled thirty thousand men under their various feudal leaders upon the Borough moor, and marched from thence against the enemy. But as the Scottish army halted at Fala moor, they received information that the English had retired to Berwick and dismissed the greater part of their forces. The Scottish nobles on receiving this intelligence united in declaring that the occasion of their service in arms was ended, signified their intention to attend the host no longer, and prepared to depart with their respective followers.

The king was deeply grieved and irritated by this unexpected resolution. There was, however, no remedy: in a Scottish feudal camp the aristocracy were omnipotent, the king's power merely nominal; and to have urged the dispute to an open rupture would only have incurred the risk of reviving the scene of Lauder bridge in James III's time. James dismissed his refractory army when it was about to dismiss itself, and returned so deeply moved with shame and indignation that he not only lost his spirits, but his health was obviously affected.

The royal counsellors endeavoured to find a remedy for James' wounded feelings by appointing another attempt to be made against England on the western border, the success of which might, they hoped, obliterate the recollection of the mutiny at Fala. The lord Maxwell was appointed to command ten thousand men; but though Maxwell was himself a counsellor and favourite of the king, they were injudiciously composed of the followers of Cassilis, Glencairn, and other westland nobles, amongst whom the Reformation had made considerable progress, and who were proportionably disgusted with the war, which they regarded as undertaken at the instigation and to serve the interest of the papal clergy. This may in part account for the extraordinary scene which followed.

Maxwell's army had assembled and advanced as far as the western border, when it was drawn up in order, and the king's favourite, Oliver Sinclair, was raised on a buckler for the purpose of reading the commission intrusting Lord Maxwell with the command of the army. The ill-timed introduction of this unpopular minion in a situation and duty so ostensible occasioned a belief that the commission which he read was in his own favour; and as this rumour gained ground a general confusion prevailed, and many who did not choose to fight under the command of so unpopular a general began to leave their ranks and return homeward.

Dacre and Musgrave, two chiefs of the English borderers who had come to watch the motions of the Scottish army, were witnesses of the strange and apparently causeless scene of confusion which it exhibited. Without knowing the cause, they took advantage of the effect and charged with a degree of courage and determination which changed the confusion of the enemy into flight, and in many cases into surrender; for a great number of the chiefs and

[1542 A.D.]

nobles [twelve hundred in all] chose rather to become the prisoners of the English leaders than to escape to their own country and meet the displeasure of their offended monarch. The whole Scottish force dispersed without stroke of sword, and the victors made many prisoners.

King James had advanced to the border that he might earlier receive intelligence from the army. But when he learned the news of a rout so dishonourable as that of Solway the honour of his kingdom and the reputation of his arms were, he thought, utterly and irredeemably lost, and his proud spirit refused to survive the humiliation. He removed from the border to Edinburgh, and from thence to Falkland, his deep melancholy still increasing and mixing itself with the secret springs of life. At length his powers of digestion totally failed. It was in this disconsolate condition that a messenger, who came to acquaint James V that his queen, then at Linlithgow, was delivered of a daughter, found him to whom he brought the news. "Is it so?" said the expiring monarch, reflecting on the alliance which had placed the Stuart family on the throne; "then God's will be done. It came with a lass, and will go with a lass." With these words, presaging the extinction of his house, he made a signal of adieu to his followers and courtiers and expired, December 14th, 1542.c

There was little to distinguish the reign of James V in an intellectual sense, save for the survival of certain stars of the previous reign, such as Gawain Douglas, Boece, and Major. Sir David Lyndsay is the only exception to the creative barrenness of the period, John Bellenden's translations of Livy and Boece into the vernacular hardly deserving the name creation. But Lyndsay is a host in himself and an ornament to any period. In the history of satire there is hardly a more brilliant or vigorous wit or a more vivid portrayer of the exterior as well as the soul of his time. His Satyre of the Three Estates is his masterwork and has in no sense lost its charm or power by the long passage of centuries.a

Thus was Scotland, by the death of an accomplished king, having only attained his thirty-first year, reduced once more to one of those long minorities which are the bane of her history, and which in the present case brought even more than the usual amount of misfortune. The Scots involved in a national war which had no national object were, upon the decease of James V, willingly disposed to address Henry in a pacific tone, in which they reminded him that they now spoke in behalf of their infant queen, his own near relation, who could have wronged no one since she did not as yet know good from evil.

The road to the conquest of Scotland might, to a sanguine prince, appear to lie open; but it had been repeatedly attempted from the time of Severus downwards, and had never been found practicable. The impetuous temper of Henry VIII was, therefore, forced to stoop to the plan adopted by Edward I ere the death of the Maid of Norway compelled his ambition to wear a sterner and more undisguised shape. A matrimonial alliance betwixt the young heiress of Scotland and his son, afterwards Edward VI, promised the English monarch all the advantages of conquest without either risk or odium. With this purpose he kept his eyes bent earnestly on the affairs of Scotland, to seize, as fast as they should occur, all means of furthering so desirable an object.

ARRAN REGENT: UNDER THE SWAY OF CARDINAL BEATON

The government of the kingdom was claimed by the late prime minister, Cardinal Beaton, in virtue of a testament of the deceased king, which, however, was universally regarded as a forgery perpetrated by that ambitious