76

KNOX AS A TEACHER.

deem not so wonderfully particular, were fulfilled to the letter when the castle was taken by storm, and Grange, its captain, made prisoner. Like many other of Knox's utterances, they proved his power of foresight, if not of prophecy, as his followers long believed. Melville also took notes of Knox's sermons on Daniel. "I had my pen and my little buik," he says, "and tuk away sic things as I could comprehend. In the opening up of his text he was moderate for the space of an half hour; but when entered into application, he made me so to grew and tremble that I could not hold a pen to wrait."

But Knox had gentler moments, and would sometimes "come in and repose him in our college yeard, and call us schollars unto him, and blis us and exhort us to know God and His wark in our countrie, and stand by the guid cause, to use our time weel, and learn the guid instructions and follow the guid example of our maisters." He even took part in the amusements of the place, and was present at a play acted at the marriage of Mr Colvin. He may have been tempted to what some of his successors would have regarded as a sin, by the subject of the play, which was the siege and taking of the Castle of Edinburgh and the Captain "according to Mr Knox's doctrine." At last, as so many years before, a call, in which he recognised the voice of God, which he dare not resist, came, and he removed from St Andrews to Edinburgh to take charge of the congregation there at the earnest request of the Kirk and brethren. They referred his returning to his own judgment. He made it a condition that he should not be pressed in any sort to temper his tongue or cease to speak against the treasonable dealings of the Castle of Edinburgh, and received a humble assurance that "they never mean it nor thocht to put a bridle to his tongue." There was at least one

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text of Scripture which Knox and his brethren overlooked, but the times required the Scriptures to be searched, as they thought, in the prophecies of Daniel or the Book of the Revelation, not in the Psalms of David or the Epistle of James. "He left St Andrews to the grief," says Bannatyne, "of a few godlie that wer in that town, but to the gret joy and pleasure of the rest, especially to the Balfours, Kirkcaldies, and Hamiltons, enemies of God and the King." It was a rigid estimate of the numbers of the godly even for the strictest Calvinist. The influence of Knox was great while and wherever he lived and taught, and did not pass with his death. He left behind many disciples in St Andrews and the other burghs of the East Neuk. Fife became one of the parts of Scotland which adhered most numerously and firmly to the doctrines of the Reformation, as afterwards narrowed and adapted by the Covenanters to suit their special testimonies against their own times.

CHAPTER VI.

JAMES VI. AND ANDREW MELVILLE

AT ST ANDREWS-THE CAPTAINS OF THE ARMADA AT ANSTRUTHER -THE MURDER OF THE EARL OF MORAY AT DONIBRISTLE-MELVILLE CALLS JAMES "GOD'S SILLY

VASSAL AT FALKLAND -THE FIFE ADVENTURERS
IN THE LEWES.

THE Commencement of the reign of James VI. in Scotland was marked by outrages and murders even more than other parts of its bloodstained annals. A violent death, with or without form of law, was the ordinary fate of a regent or an archbishop. Mary's life was for a time safer in an English prison than it would have been in a Scottish palace. If James exaggerated the attempts on his own life, it was a very natural exaggeration. There were feuds everywhere, harrying of lands, burning of castles, and slaying of men. With a curious mixture of legal forms and criminal intentions, leading nobles still bound themselves and their retainers amongst the landed gentry in bonds or covenants, duly written by notaries with witnesses and seals, to make common cause in offensive as well as defensive war. Before what court, save that of Mars, these deadly bonds could be enforced, none of the signatories considered.

Fife, with its many castles and royal residences, was

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no exception from this chronic war. The King himself, like his mother and several of his ancestors, had more than once to run the risk of kidnapping-one of the modes by which the feudal nobles limited the Scottish monarchy. Another Bothwell attempted to seize his person at Holyrood and Falkland, as his predecessor had seized that of Mary. The most famous of these attempts was the Raid of Ruthven. The Gowrie Plot took place outside, though just outside, the borders of Fife. When he fled from Perth, James took refuge at Falkland. Fife was still one of the homes of the Scottish monarchs.

The relation of James with the Presbyterian clergy was as strained as with many of the nobles. If the latter tried to control his person, the former claimed to direct his conscience. The one represented an aristocracy unaccustomed to submit to royal authority, and the other a democracy to which the religious revolution had given a new power. Educated as a Presbyterian under George Buchanan, James early showed personal inclination to Episcopacy, and a disposition to treat the Catholic nobles with toleration. The Presbyterian Church had passed beyond the stage of the First Book of Discipline into that of the Second, of which Andrew Melville was the chief compiler.

Melville was another, not a wiser Knox. With more scholastic learning, a professor rather than a minister, with less knowledge of men, and less political though perhaps as much ecclesiastical power, he had some of, though not all, the eloquence of his great predecessor, and the same unbending spirit. Like Knox, he led the Church, and was the chief antagonist of James, as Knox had been of Mary. To see Church and State confront each other in the persons of their chief rulers had become a common, almost a natural sight in Scotland.

80 MELVILLE'S LESSON AT ST ANDREWS, 1587.

The conferences with a view to healing, but with the effect of widening, the breach between the King and the Presbyterians, which took place in Fife, have been described by the lively pen of his nephew, James Melville. Their first interview was for a different purpose. In June 1587, James came to St Andrews, where Andrew Melville was head of the college, then called New, afterwards St Mary's. Reformed by his masterly administration, it had gained a name far beyond Scotland. The King brought with him Du Bartas, a French poet, then famous, now little known. He declared his wish to hear Melville lecture for the entertainment of his guest. But Melville, instead of complying with the royal command, thought it necessary to assert his independence, and sent a message that he "had teached his ordinar that day in the forenoon;" to which the King, with the want of dignity and arbitrariness which marked his character, replied, "That is all ane, I mon hae a lesson, and be here within ane hour." Instead of further reluctance Melville came and gave a lesson of a kind James was to hear more often than he desired. "He treated," says his nephew, "maist clearly and mightily of the right government of Christ, and in effect refuted the haill Actes of Parliament made against the discipline thereof, to the great instruction and comfort of its auditory, except the King alane, wha was very angry all that night"—"crabbit," as his father had been after listening to a sermon of Knox. Next day, Adamson, the bishop, gave a lecture. Andrew Melville, contrary to his custom, attended, and took notes. He then caused his bell to be rung at two o'clock, long after his ordinary hour, to let the students know that he would answer the Bishop. The King remonstrated, and even offered to take his four-hours or afternoon meal in the college with Melville to prevent the lecture. When