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Beatoun, at length triumphed with the aid of France, and sent the young Queen of Scots to marry Francis II., they seemed to recognise that they could only maintain their advantage by meeting public opinion in endeavouring to reform the Church. Accordingly, in November 1549, a council was convoked at Edinburgh, of which the first canon declares that the licentiousness of the clergy had given rise to the gravest scandals, to repress which the rules enjoined by the Council of Basle must be strictly enforced and universally obeyed. The second canon is no less significant in ordering that prelates and other ecclesiastics shall not live with their illegitimate children, nor provide for them or promote them in the paternal churches, nor marry their daughters to barons by endowing them with the patrimony of Christ, nor cause their sons to be made barons by the same means.1

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This was of small avail. Ten years afterwards, the progress of heresy becoming ever more alarming, another council was held, in March 1559, to devise means to put a stop to the encroachments of the enemy. assembly the Catholic nobles addressed an earnest prayer To this for reformation. After alluding to the proceedings of the Parliament of 1542, they add, " And siclyk remembring in diverss of the lait provinciale counsales haldin within this realm, that poynt has been treittet of, and sindrie statutis synodale maid therupon, of the quhilks nevertheless thar hes folowit nan or litill fruitt as yitt, bot rathare the said estate is deteriorate . . . it is maist expedient therefore that thai presentlie condescend to seik reformation of thir lyvis . . . and naymlie that oppin and manifest sins and notor offencis be forborn and abstenit fra in tyme to cum." In this request they had been anticipated by the Reformers, who the previous year, in a supplication addressed to the Queen-regent, included among their demands "That the

1 Concil. Edinburgens. ann. 1549 can. 1, 2 (Wilkins IV. 48).

wicked, slanderous, and detestable life of Prelats and of the State Ecclesiasticall may be reformed, that the people by them have not occasion (as of many dayes they have had) to contemne their Ministrie and the Preaching whereof they should be Messengers."

The council, thus urged by friend and foe, recognised the extreme necessity of the case, and did its best to cure the immedicable disease. Its first canon reaffirmed the observance of the Basilian regulations, and appointed a commission empowered to enforce them; and, that nothing should interfere with its efficiency, the Archbishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow made a special renunciation of their exemption from the jurisdiction of the council. The second canon, in forbidding the residence of illegitimate children with their clerical fathers, endeavoured to procure obedience to the rule ordered by the council of 1549, by permitting it for four days in each quarter, and by a penalty for infractions of £200 in the case of an archbishop, £100 in that of a bishop, and leaving the mulct to be imposed on inferior ecclesiastics at the discretion of the officials. The third canon prohibited the promotion of children in their fathers' benefices, and supplicated the Queen-regent to obtain of the Pope that no dispensations should be granted to evade the rule. The fourth canon inhibited ecclesiastics from marrying their daughters to barons and lairds, and endowing them with Church lands, or making their sons barons or lairds with more than £100 annual income, under pain of fine to the amount of the dowry or lands abstracted from the Church; and all grants of Church lands or tithes to concubines or children were pronounced null and void.1

1 Wilkins IV. 207-10.-Knox, p. 129. It should be borne in mind in estimating these penalties that they are expressed in pounds Scots, which were about one-twelfth of the pound sterling. These canons, it appears, were not adopted without opposition. According to Knox, "But herefrom appealed the Bishop of Murray and other prelates, saying That they would abide the canon law. And so they might well enough do, so long as they remained Interpretors, Dispensators, Makers and Disannullers of the law" (op. cit. 119). It was doubtless on some such considerations that the

When such legislation was necessary, the disorders which it was intended to repress are acknowledged in terms admitting neither of palliation nor excuse. The extent of

the evil especially alluded to in the latter canons is further exemplified by the fact that during the thirty years immediately following the establishment of the Reformation in Scotland, more letters of legitimation were taken out than were issued in the two subsequent centuries. These were given to the sons of the clergy who were allowed to retain their benefices, and who then made over the property to their natural children.1

Such being the state of morals among the ministers of the old religion, it is easy to appreciate the immense advantage enjoyed by the Reformers. They made good use of it. Knox loses no opportunity of stigmatising the "pestilent Papists and Masse-mongers " as "adulterers and whoremasters," who were thus perpetually held up to the people for execration, while the individual wrongs from which so many suffered were noised about and made the subject of constantly increasing popular indignation.2 Yet

Archbishop of St. Andrews relied when he consented to waive his exemption in this matter. His personal reputation may be estimated from the remark of Queen Mary when, in December 1566, he performed the rite of baptism on James VI. She forbade him to use the popular ceremony of employing his saliva, giving a reason which was in the highest degree derogatory to his moral character (Sir J. Y. Simpson, in Proceedings of Epidemiological Society of London, November 5, 1860).

1 Robertson, Hist. Scot. Bk. II.

2 Thus the Parliament of 1560, which effected a settlement of the Reformed Religion, was urged to its duty by a Supplication presented in the name of "The Barons, Gentlemen, Burgesses, and other true Subjects of this Realm, professing the Lord Jesus within the same," which, among its arguments against Catholicism, does not hesitate to assert: "Secondarily, seeing that the sacraments of Jesus Christ are most shamefully abused and profaned by that Romane Harlot and her sworne vassals, and also because that the true Discipline of the Ancient Church is utterly now among that Sect extinguished: For who within the Realme are more corrupt in life and manners than are they that are called the Clergie, living in whoredom and adultery, deflouring Virgins, corrupting Matrons, and doing all abomination without fear of punishment. We humbly, therefore, desire your Honors to finde remedy against the one and the other."-Knox, p. 255.

VOL. II.

L

the abrogation of celibacy occupies less space in the history of the Scottish Reformation than in that of any other people who threw off the allegiance to Rome.

The remote position of Scotland and its comparative barbarism rendered it in some degree inaccessible to the early doctrines of Luther and Zwingli. Before it began to show a trace of the new ideas, clerical marriage had long passed out of the region of disputation with the Reformers, and was firmly established as one of the inseparable results of the doctrine of justification professed by all the reformed Churches. Not only was it thus accepted as a matter of course by all the converts to the new faith, but that faith, when once introduced, spread in Scotland with a rapidity proportioned to the earnest character of the people. The permission to read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, granted by Parliament in 1543, doubtless had much to do with this; the leaning of the Regent Arran to the same side gave it additional impetus, and the savage fierceness with which the Reformers were prepared to vindicate their belief is shown by the murder of Cardinal Beatoun, which was countenanced and justified by Knox himself. Powerful nobles soon saw in it the means of emancipating themselves from the vacillating control of the Regent; nor was the central authority strengthened when, in 1554, the reins of power were wrested from the feeble Arran and confided to the Queen-dowager, Mary of Guise, who found herself obliged to encourage each party by turns, and to balance one against the other, to prevent either Catholic or Calvinist from obtaining control over the state. Then too, as in

1 This doctrine bore its full share in the history of the Scottish Reformation. Two years after the execution of the protomartyr, Patrick Hamilton, in 1528, his sister Catharine was arraigned on account of her belief in justification through Christ. Learned divines urged upon her with prolix earnestness of disputation the necessity of works, until her patience gave way, and she rudely exclaimed, “Work here and work there, what kind of working is all this? No work can save me but the work of Christ my Saviour."-By the connivance of the King she was enabled to escape to England.-Calderwood's Historie, I. 109.

Germany and England, the temporal possessions of the Church were a powerful temptation to its destruction. From the great Duke of Chatelleraut to the laird of some insignificant peel, all were needy and all eager for a share in the spoil. When, in 1560, an assembly of the nobles at Edinburgh listened to a disputation on the Mass, and the Catholic doctors were unable to defend it as a propitiatory sacrifice, the first exclamation of the lords revealed the secret tendencies of their thoughts: "We have been miserably deceived heretofore; for if the Mass may not obtain remission of sins to the quick and to the dead, wherefore were all the Abbies so richly doted and endowed with our Temporall lands?"1

Of course, less selfish purposes were put forward to enlist the support of the people. On the 1st January 1559, when the storm was gathering, but before it had burst, the inmates of the religious houses found affixed to their gates a proclamation in the name of "The Blinde, Crooked, Lame, Widows, Orphans, and all other Poor, so visited by the hand of God as cannot work," ordering the monks to leave the patrimony intended to relieve the suffering, but usurped by indolent shavelings, giving them until Whit-Sunday to make their exit, after which they would be ejected by force, and ending with the significant warning: "Let him, therefore, that hath before stolen, steal no more, but rather let him work with his hands that he may be helpfull to the poore."

Such a cry could hardly fail to be popular, but when the threat was carried into execution, the blind and the crooked, the widow and orphan received so small a share of the spoil that they were worse off than before. As we have already seen in England, the destruction of the Scottish monasteries was the commencement of the necessity of making some public provision for paupers.3

1 Knox, p. 283.

2 Knox, p. 119.-Calderwood, I. 423.

3 Thus the Assembly of the Church in 1562 drew up a remonstrance to the Queen,