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The Scottish Reformation
Chapter I.—The
Hamilton Period, a. d. 1515—1543.
Section 1. Commencement of the
Reformation |
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The year 1525 marks the commencement of the Scottish
Reformation. The writings of Luther and his followers had then begun to
find their way into the country, and were exciting discussion among the
educated part of the community, on the errors and abuses of the Church.
The Bishops were already in a state of alarm, and procured the passing
of an Act in the Parliament which met in Edinburgh, in July of that
year, by which it was ordained "That no manner of persons, strangers,
that happen to arrive with the ships within any part of this realm,
shall bring with them any books or works of Luther or his disciples, or
shall dispute or rehearse his heresies or opinions, unless it be to the
confusion thereof, under the pain of escheating their ships and goods
and putting of their persons in prison. And that this Act be published
and proclaimed throughout this realm, at all ports and burghs of the
same ; so that they may allege no ignorance thereof."
The preamble of the Act boasted that the realm of
^Scotland and its lieges had "firmly persisted in the holy faith since
the same was first received, by them, and had never as yet admitted any
opinions contrary to the Christian faith, but had ever been clean of all
such filth and vice." But the bishops should have remembered that for
ages the early Church of Scotland had carefully distinguished between
the Christian faith, and what they termed the holy faith of Rome ; and
that in the preceding century, the Lollards of Kyle, and Fife, and
Perth, had loudly protested against the corruptions of primitive truth
and order which Tiad been introduced by the Church of the Popes. Could
the Archbishop of Glasgow be ignorant that in days so recent as those of
James IV., numerous descendants of the
Lollards of Kyle had been arraigned for heresy before the tribunal of
that See, and were only saved from the extreme censures of the Church by
the interposition of the King 1 Were the Bishops not aware that
Lollardism and Lutheranism were very much alike. At all events
they were doomed to see the nation become very much ashamed of that
immaculate faith of which they boasted in its name; and sink deep in the
mire of that heretical pravity of which they spoke with such arrogant
contempt.
Foremost among the Anti-Lutheran Bishops was old
Gavin bar, of Aberdeen; "and foremost among the Lutheranizing
communities of the kingdom, was his own ancient cathedral
city. Not a month had elapsed from the passing of the above Act, when he
obtained from the boy-king, James V. and his
Council, a warrant to the Sheriffs of the city and county of Aberdeen,
setting forth "that sundry strangers and others within that diocese were
possessed of Luther's books, and favoured his errors and false
opinions"—and charging them straitly to make immediate inquisition after
such persons, and "to confiscate their goods to the King's use and
profit." The Bishop thus signalized his diocese as the first in the
kingdom where the Reformation struck its roots. A quarter ot a century
before, his predecessor, Bishop Elphinston, had made Aberdeen the chief
seat of classical learning in the country by founding King's College,
and introducing into it the study of Roman literature under the
Presidency of Hector Boyce, the fellow-student and correspondent of
Erasmus. And already the young institution had begun to bear fruit.
Admiration of Erasmus led the way at Aberdeen, as it did in all the
universities of Europe, to admiration of Luther. Boyce felt keenly, and
spoke strongly, of the need of Church-reform; and it was no wonder that
many of his scholars became professed Reformers. He could have little
sympathy with the persecuting zeal of Elphinston's successor. No
Lutheran preacher could have expressed himself more warmly regarding the
corrupt and disordered state of the Scottish Church than he was doing at
that very time, in his History of Scotland—a work which he published in
the following year, 1526. "How different," says he, "is the state of
matters at the present day, from what it was in the days of James
I.—that Maecenas of Scottish letters! No
eloquence can paint it in sufficiently vivid colours, nor deplore it in
terms of adequate force. Instead of the best and the most learned men
being sought out to fill the highest offices of the Church, the most
indolent and the most wicked of mankind have been allowed by degrees to
get possession of them—seizing them with ambitious hands, and preying
voraciously upon a people who are half-devoured by their extortions.
They leave nothing for men of merit to enjoy. Nay, with all their might
they oppose the interests of learning, lest, if the nation should once
begin to desire a better state of things, they should be compelled to
abandon their vices, and to let the spoil which they have clutched
escape out of their hands. These evils call for Reform. Let those whose
duty it is to see them remedied look to it. A feeling of just
indignation, and a becoming commiseration for the condition of my native
church, have compelled me to call their attention to this duty.
It was no marvel that Luther found sympathising readers at Aberdeen,
when such sentiments as these came from the Principal's chair of King's
College.
Nor did Aberdeen stand alone in this early zeal for a
Reformation. The seaports of Montrose, Dundee, Perth, St. Andrews, and
Leith, were all more or less infected with the same spirit. The Scottish
traders and "skippers" were in truth the earliest pioneers of the
Reformation. In their annual voyages to the ports of Flanders, the
Netherlands, and Lower Germany, they found Lutheran books and ideas
everywhere in circulation; and they imported them with their merchandise
into their own country. Nor was it only the exciting tracts of
Wittemberg which they found exposed to sale in those crowded marts;
William Tyndale had markets for his English Testaments in Antwerp, in
Middleburg, and in Hamburg, where they were eagerly bought up by British
traders, and secretly conveyed into England and Scotland. Halket, an
agent employed by Cardinal Wolsey to put a stop to the English
importation of the dangerous book, informed his master, in a letter
still extant, that many copies of it had been bought up by Scottish
merchants, and were conveyed into Leith and Edinburgh, and most of all
into St. Andrews.
Yes! St. Andrews itself, the seat of the primacy—the
ecclesiastical and literary capital of the kingdom—was
beginning to Lutheranize. How little did the primate, James Beaton, busy
with political faction and intrigue, suspect such a danger ! And how
little did the dissolute Prior of St. Andrews, Patrick Hepburn, busy
with guilty intrigues of another kind, suspect it! To all outward
appearance, the ancient city of St. Andrew was in the very zenith of its
glory. Never before had it been so magnificent in architecture, nor its
streets so thronged with churchmen and academics. The College of St.
Leonard's had just been added to the cluster of its schools. The
Monastery of the Blackfriars had been recently rebuilt with great
splendour; and some architectural works at the Priory, designed and
partially executed by John Hepburn the last prior, had been finished in
a style of great magnificence by Patrick, his successor. The halls of
the University were crowded with students, attracted by the fame of John
Major—a doctor of the Sorbonne, and one of the chief scholastic
professors of the age. The Archbishop's courts were filled with suitors,
and his exchequer enriched, by the sale of privileges and dispensations,
with an ever-flowing stream of gold. The Vatican of Scotland appeared to
have reached its highest and palmiest estate. And yet the axe was even
now laid to the root of the tree; already the little cloud was seen in
the horizon, no bigger than a man's hand, which was ere long to cover
the whole firmament of the church with deadly storm. Luther and Tyndale
were at the Primate's Castle-gate, and they were more than a match for
all the power and policy of the Beatons, and the Hepburns, and the
Dunbars of the Episcopate. The word of God was already in men's hands ;
and the Spirit of God was beginning to move in men's hearts ; and
these were soon to show themselves mighty to the pulling down of the
strongholds of error and superstition.
The Reformation of the Church of Scotland had begun.
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