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WE have seen the
influence that Knox had upon the Church of England. The form which
the Reformation took in that country was not a little due to him. It
may be true that his arrival on the scene was too late to give it
that cast which he himself chiefly favoured, and which he was
afterwards able to impose upon the Church of Scotland; all the same,
he impressed the leaders of Church and State at the time with his
personality, and introduced certain features into the doctrine and
ritual of the Church of England that have characterised it ever
since.
But it may be asked
in turn if England had no influence upon Knox. It should never be
forgotten that he spent five years of the best part of his life in
that country, and that the next five years were passed on the
Continent, but in ministering to an English congregation. The
experience which he gained as a consequence was most valuable, and
stood him in good stead in after years when he had to carry through
the Reformation in his own country. But there are those who think
that that experience was not the only benefit which he received from
England and Englishmen. They imagine that his natural asperity was
somewhat softened by fellowship with men and women who belonged to
an older civilisation, and that the amenity of life which prevailed
in the sister country across the border toned down his innate
tendency to sharpness of temper and harshness of judgment.
This, of course, is
very flattering to England, and not very complimentary to Knox. We
fail to see the truth of it. Knox's character was all of a piece.
The friendships which figure prominently in his life at that time,
and which were made immediately after his appearance in England,
show that by nature he was not the rough, rude, self-contained man
that some imagine him to have been ; for beneath a rugged exterior
there was a depth of affection and tenderness which drew to him
those who felt the need of support and comfort while waging the
battle of life.
It may appear
singular that his English friends were for the most part women. His
relations toward them form one of the most charming features of his
life. Knox before and after this time had many men friends, but his
attitude towards them was quite different from that which existed
between him and his women friends. The men joined with the Reformer
in the great public work which the times demanded. Their friendship
was largely a matter of intellectual and political sympathy, but his
relations to women were quite different. They looked to him for
spiritual comfort and leaned upon him for religious support, and
this is all the more remarkable because, in his First Blast against
the Monstruous Regiment of Women, he is not slack in declaring his
poor opinion of the gentler sex. "Women," he said in that remarkable
and imprudent production, "women are weak, frail, impatient, feeble,
and foolish"; and yet he in turn would seem to have leaned upon
women and to have found them the most helpful of friends. The truth
is that in Knox's case, as in that of many others, the head and
heart were at war, and his practice was better than his belief.
We can well conceive
how the Reformer may have impressed the imagination of many on his
appearance in Berwick as a preacher of the Gospel. His reputation
and his sufferings would have gone before him. Here was the man who
had spent nineteen months as a slave in the French galleys for his
religious convictions, who was recognised as the representative
Scotsman on the Protestant side, the man on whose shoulders had
fallen the mantle of Wishart, and who had worsted in argument the
doctors and dignitaries of the Romish Church. His fame as a
preacher, too, would have gone before him, and it is not at all
unlikely that for these very reasons he would be looked upon with
interest, and would appeal to the female mind and heart. In any case
he had not been long in Berwick when he drew to his side one who
clung to him during the rest of her life, and to whom he was indeed
a spiritual adviser and comforter.
This admirer was Mrs.
Elizabeth Bowes, wife of Richard Bowes, Governor of the Castle of
Norham. She would seem to have been one of those women who are
affected by a spirit of religious melancholy bordering almost on
morbidness. She had many temptations real or imaginary, and tortured
herself by introspection, and was in constant doubt as to her own
ultimate salvation. Such a woman found in Knox that strong tower and
refuge which her soul desired, and between them there sprang up a
close fellowship which was only broken by death. "Great
familiarity," he himself declared, "and long acquaintance, the cause
of which was neither flesh nor blood but a troubled conscience upon
her part, which never suffered her to rest but when she was in the
company of the faithful, and who (from the first hearing of the word
in my mouth) she judged me to be one." That is Knox's own
explanation of the intimate relation that existed between them, and,
we must admit, a very satisfactory one. "I have always delighted,"
he afterwards said, "in your company, and, when labours would
permit, you know I have not spared hours of talk and commune with
you." For years he listened with sympathy to her various complaints,
and when absent answered all her questions in a kindly and
painstaking manner.
It is not strange
that occasionally he felt somewhat impatient, and replied to her as
follows: "My daily labours must now increase, and therefore spare me
as much as you may. My old malady troubles me sore, and nothing is
more contrary to my health than writing." Knox here refers to the
disease which he contracted while in the French galleys. It
interfered not a little with his labours, and he suffered from the
effects of it to his dying day.
It ought to be
remembered when reading of the outpourings of Mrs. Bowes that both
she and Knox had but recently severed their connection with the
Roman Catholic Church, where confession was a recognised and
long-standing usage. It was the custom then, as it still is in the
Roman Catholic Church, for those afflicted by a troubled conscience
to pour out their "dolours" to their father confessor. We can quite
understand how difficult it would be for those who but a year or two
ago had been members of that Church to break away from the custom.
This will account for such a confidence as the following on the part
of Knox to Mrs. Bowes: "Call to mind," he says, "what I did standing
at a cupboard in Alnwick. In very deed I thought that no creature
had been tempted as I was." But the wife of Richard Bowes was
anxious that the relation between her family and Knox should be
closer than that of mere friendship, and she favoured the proposal
that Marjory, her fifth daughter, and one of a family of twelve, a
girl still in her teens, should marry Knox. The Reformer himself was
quite eager that this proposal should be carried out, and in due
time he became betrothed to Marjory Bowes and subsequently married
her.
But all this did not
take place without very considerable trouble, and more than once it
almost seemed as if Knox's hopes would have suffered shipwreck. The
Bowes family did not regard the union with approval. Richard Bowes
himself was still a Roman Catholic, and on that account and for
other reasons he endeavoured to stop the match. Knox was a man of
uncertain prospects, his refusal of a bishopric and an important
vicarage made him to be regarded as somewhat impracticable, nor was
he quite young, and his family could not boast of the lineage of
that of Richard Bowes, the Governor of Norham Castle. But Knox was
persistent, and so was his future mother-in-law, and the Reformer
declared after some rebuffs which she experienced that it should now
be "his business." "It behoved him," he says, "to jeopard his life
for the comfort of his own flesh, both fear and friendship of all
earthly creatures laid aside."
He accordingly
interviewed Sir Robert Bowes, the head of the house and the bride's
uncle, in London. He got, however, a very cold reception. He found
Sir Robert not only a despiser but also a taunter of `God's
messengers,' "God be merciful unto him." Knox stood firm and "kept a
good countenance, but the despiteful words had so pierced his heart
that his life was bitter unto him." After this plainly unfavourable
reception he seemed almost to have lost heart. Yet during his last
month in England almost, when dangers were thickening round him, he
undertook a perilous journey to Newcastle in the hope of seeing Mrs.
Bowes and Marjory, but he had to leave the country without an
interview.
When he revisited it,
however, it was to take back to the Continent the daughter as his
bride. This Marjory figures now and again in Knox's history, and
always in a favourable light. There are those who declare that she
married Knox because her mother wished it, or because her
imagination was fired by the sufferings of the Reformer and by the
halo of sanctity which surrounded him. There might be worse reasons
for marriage, although we are not inclined to admit that these were
the sole motives which induced her to become Knox's wife. She proved
faithful and devoted, and earned the praise of Calvin, and, after
her death, the sorrowful regret of her husband.
These were not the
only female friends that Knox had. He had several in Edinburgh, and
he corresponded with then regularly after his first visit to his
native country. It would seem, however, that he was not specially
enamoured with his "Edinburgh sisters," as he calls them, and
somewhat bluntly remarks in one of his letters that his
communications were not intended for any one individually, that what
he wrote to one was meant for all. We cannot fail to be impressed by
his patience in listening to the complaints of these Edinburgh
sisters, and in answering their questions regarding, among other
things, the kind of dress that females ought to wear. He replies at
great length to such queries, writing, if not a treatise, certainly
a pamphlet on the subject. One of them, Mrs. Afackgil, wife of the
Clerk Register, would seem to have been troubled by the fact that
her husband was still an enemy to the Reformation, and by her
scruples as to how she should conduct herself towards him. Knox's
views on a delicate point of this kind were very cautious and
prudent, but he naturally inclined to the opinion that the Clerk
Register would have been more worthy of the respect and obedience of
his wife had he been a Protestant.
But the woman in
whose friendship he would seem to have found the most satisfaction
was Mrs. Anne Locke, the wife of a merchant in Cheapside, London. It
is possible that she was the one of the three women who, on hearing
a letter of Mrs. Bowes read in their presence, exclaimed, "Oh! would
to God I might speak with that person, for I perceive there are more
tempted than I." Mrs. Hickman, the wife of another merchant, would
also seem to have shown Knox much kindness during his stay in
London, but it was Mrs. Locke who proved his most valued and
confidential friend. For the next ten years he corresponded with her
regularly, telling her of the progress of the Reformation in
Scotland, asking her to procure books for him, and at the same time
giving her that spiritual guidance which she desired.
It is in a letter to
her that the following sentence occurs, which is one of the clearest
bits of self-revelation in which Knox ever indulged: "Of nature," he
says, "I am churlish, and in conditions different from many, yet one
thing I ashame not to affirm, that familiarity once thoroughly
contracted was never yet broken of my default. the cause may be that
I have rather need of all than that any have need of me."
It was towards the
end of February or the beginning of March, 1554, that Knox left
England. He would seem to have gone direct to Dieppe. He chose this
place possibly because he would be within reach of his old
congregations, in whose spiritual welfare he ever continued to be
deeply interested. One of the first things which he did on his
arrival at the French seaport was to finish his treatise on the
Sixth Psalm, which he was composing for the benefit of Mrs. Bowes,
and to despatch it to her. He thereafter set himself to address
words of exhortation and comfort to his old flock in England.
This production,
which was afterwards published under the title of A Godly Letter to
the Faithful in London, Newca.9tle, and Berwick-, is spirited and
eloquent, and shows Knox at his best. He harks back on his old
subject of the idolatry of the Romish Church, and, afraid lest they
should revert to their old belief, he warns them of the plagues that
would visit them, and encourages them to adhere to their former
profession.
One is not a little
surprised at the optimism which underlies this address, for really
the times were far from promising for the new religion. Mary of
England had begun to persecute and burn the faithful. Henry ii. of
France was setting himself to stamp out the new religion, and Mary
of Lorraine had made Scotland an impossible harbour for those who
had accepted the Protestant Faith. It is very remarkable how, all
through, Knox's courage and hopes of final victory would never seem
to have left him. He may have been reminded by his present
surroundings of the dark days when, as a galley slave, sick and sad
at heart, he looked on these same shores of France, and how the
Almighty had at last delivered him and given him a great work to do
in England. The remembrance of this would no doubt strengthen his
faith, and add to his old conviction that he would one day lift up
his voice in that kirk where by the mercy of God he had first been
called to preach the evangel.
He did not stay long
in Dieppe, but left it, as he remarks, with a "sore troubled heart,
journeying whither God knoweth." For two months he travelled from
one place to another, chiefly in
Switzerland,
reasoning with the "pastors and many other excellent learned men
upon such matters as now I cannot commit to writing." Everywhere he
was received as a friend and as a brother. The two most
distinguished men whose acquaintance he made at this time were
Calvin and Bullinger. Knox was familiar with the writings of these
men, and he held them both, but particularly the first, in great
respect. Calvin had not at this time attained the position which he
afterwards occupied as a leader in the Reformed Church, but he was
already recognised as one of its chief men, and Knox even at that
time characterises him as that "singular instrument of God."
Knox's knowledge of
the political and religious circumstances that prevailed in Europe,
and chiefly in England and Scotland, suggested to him several very
important and far-reaching questions which he would seem to have
freely discussed with Calvin, and about which he desired his
opinion. These questions really formed the basis of Knox's
subsequent action as the leader of the Reformation in Scotland, and
at this early date, in absolute independence of Calvin and others,
he pondered over and subsequently solved them to his own
satisfaction, and to the benefit of his native country and the
world.
He shortly afterwards
left Geneva, and passed to Zurich with a letter of introduction from
Calvin to Bullinger. His interview with the Swiss Reformer had for
its main object the discussion of the very questions about which he
and Calvin had conversed. In a letter of Bullinger's these questions
with his answers are fortunately preserved for us. They are four in
number. The first refers to the legality of the government of Edward
vi., seeing that the King was a minor; the second relates to female
rule; the third raises the question of the submission of the subject
to a magistrate who forces idolatry and who condemns true religion;
and the fourth anticipates the situation in Scotland, and asks what
godly persons should do when a religious nobility rises up against
an idolatrous sovereign. Anyone can see that in these questions Knox
raised the whole religious and civil revolution of that and
subsequent times in Scotch and English history. They contain within
them the dethronement of Queen Mary and the execution of Charles I.
It is absurd in the
face of them to speak of Knox's subjection to Calvin or any other.
The dictator of Geneva was a systematic theologian and biblical
exegete of the first rank, but his mind had not the political
penetration and sweep of Knox's, nor was he as capable as the latter
of dealing with practical difficulties on a large scale. Bullinger's
opinions are sensible and cautious, but his attitude was quite
incapable of meeting the circumstances that soon arose in the life
of Knox and in his work in Scotland.
In the month of May
Knox was again at Dieppe. It is probable that he visited the
sea-coast town in the hope of learning some news of England. The
persecution in that country had almost reached its full height;
Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were in prison, one or two notable men
had been executed, and Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain was
imminent. Knox thought of visiting England to "let men see what may
be done with a safe conscience . in these dolorous and dangerous
days," but the fear of what might happen, not so much to himself as
to others, restrained him. He contented himself, meanwhile, with
writing two letters to his afflicted brethren in England, telling
them not to despair, but to take courage from the experiences of the
Church which in past days had gone through similar trials.
But the most notable
production penned by him during these weary and anxious days at
Dieppe was his Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God's Truth
in England. This pamphlet has been sharply criticised and strongly
condemned for its harsh judgments, but it should not be forgotten
that it was written under trying and tragic circumstances. The fires
of Smithfield were already ablaze, the prisons were packed with
leading preachers, and the Reformation was to all appearances to be
ruthlessly trampled under foot in England. What wonder that Knox's
heart was on fire, and that he cried out for vengeance on the
"Devil's Gardiner," and "Bloody Bonner," who, as "blind buzzards and
bloodthirsty wolves," were hunting God's servants to their doom.
The most Reverend
Fathers in God, the Bishops of Winchester and London, who were thus
characterised, might possibly object to the terms which Knox hurled
at them ; and so night Queen Mary, whom he described as "Athaliah"
and "Herodias' daughter," and denounced as "false," "dissembling,"
"inconstant, proud, and a breaker of promises," "the utter mischief
of England." One passage, however, which he probably thought little
of at the time, afterwards, we shall see, brought him into serious
trouble. It is where he describes Charles v. as "no less enemy to
Christ than ever was Nero." He forgot that the Emperor whom he thus
denounced held in his hands the fate of the Protestants in the vast
dominions which he ruled, and where Knox himself was soon to be a
subject. They were recalled to his memory at a time when he least
expected it.
Of course it is easy
to condemn Knox for his strong, imprudent, and, in some respects
perhaps, unjust language, but knowing the man and the times shall we
condemn him? Had he been the creature of compromise, and a speaker
of soft words, the Reformation in Scotland, for one thing, would
never have been accomplished. Grant that his pamphlet did not make
the position of the Protestant party in England easier, and that
they had some ground for blaming him afterwards for its publication,
still it required a man like Knox to speak the truth, even though in
terms of exaggeration, and to appeal to the imagination of the
people by his graphic and epigrammatic language. In judging of Knox
in this and in other respects we should do so in relation to his
times. The age was not one which indulged in smooth things, either
in word or action, and controversy was conducted not by rapier
thrusts but by sword blows. In these more tolerant days his pamphlet
may appear rough and harsh, but by the men of his own day it would
not be characterised in that fashion. |
