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However, not all aspects of the Church were corrupt. Here are some of the positive contributions the Church made:
The Church founded three universities in the 1400s and added the College of St Mary’s in St Andrews in 1548.
Many friars were highly regarded theologians and preachers.
Some of the monasteries adopted high moral standards, such as the Carthusians at Perth and the Observant Franciscans.
In 1548, the Church tried to introduce reforms aimed at improving the morals of the clergy by ba
concubinage
(living as man and wife without being married) and preventing non-qualified persons from holding offices.
But it was all too little too late. Attendances at Mass had already fallen away dramatically.
But it wasn’t all about low standards and greed: the Protestant faith was preaching something more revolutionary. Protestants rejected the following:
Papal authority – they referred to the pope as merely the ‘bishop of Rome’.
Praying to the Virgin Mary and the saints.
The ceremonials and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church – they regarded them as idolatrous and blasphemous.
The use of Latin in services – they favoured the vernacular.
The Church hierarchy of bishops and cardinals – instead, they put the forth the revolutionary concept of everyman being his own priest.
When the Reformed Scottish Parliament met in 1560, acting in the name of the people, with an unprecedented attendance of 100 lairds drawn from all over the country, it passed a set of policies that amounted to a revolution in faith by
Ba
Rejecting the authority of the pope
Accepting a Protestant Confession of Faith
Ideas about how the new Church was to be organised were set out in the
First Book of Discipline
(1560). This was a blueprint for the future of Scotland in which the Church and national life were to be brought into harmony with Scripture. The
Book
endorsed the following:
The establishment of reformed ministries throughout the country.
A national system of education and relief for the poor.
Administration of an examination to all candidates for the ministry, to ascertain their suitability for the position.
Oversight by 12 regional ‘superintendents’, who were better paid than ministers and played the part formerly performed by bishops.
Involvement by laymen in religious matters. Each parish was to appoint a
Kirk session
(a committee made up of church elders and the minister to enforce godly obedience and discipline). A General Assembly was to be held once a year for the whole church, with laymen in attendance, to decide on ecclesiastical policy.
Importance placed on the church sermon as the focal point of worship, with ministers being instructed to speak loudly in Scots.
Communion at long tables, replicating the Last Supper.
No kneeling before altars.
No Christmas. The Reformers didn’t like special days of worship – devotion was meant to be taking place with the same amount of fervour every day.
No distractions, like statues or paintings – St Giles’s walls were whitewashed and its side chapels dismantled, and the same thing happened in St Andrews.
However, there was one potential but unpredicted obstacle to establishing the Godly Commonwealth: the return of Mary, Queen of Scots (see Figure 10-1).
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Figure 10-1:
Mary, Queen of Scots.
The Reign of Mary, Queen of Scots
Mary’s first husband, Francis II, died of a septic ear a year after coming to the throne of France. Mary, who was only 17 at the time, was forced to leave France for Scotland. But as a devout Catholic, her entry into Scottish society in August 1561 could not have been more intimidating.
The Edinburgh mob tried to break into Mary’s private chapel at Holyrood to stop a Catholic Mass from being held. Eight days later, Mary’s official entry into the capital was turned into a showpiece for the Protestant faith. The queen was presented with the keys of the city by a boy who appeared to be descending from the clouds and who also gave her an English Protestant Bible and psalm book.
Conversing with John Knox
A few days after Mary arrived back in the capital, her ‘conversations’ with John Knox (see Figure 10-2) began. Many historians see the Reformation played out as a drama between the two of them, but don’t make too much of these conversations. Mary and Knox met only four times, and only in the first two and a half years after her return. There was a lot more going on than just theological disputes between Catholics and Protestants.
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Figure 10-2:
John Knox.
John Knox was already in print against what he called, in his famous work of 1558, ‘The first blast of the trumpet against the monstruous regiment of women’. What he meant by ‘monstruous regiment’ was that rule by women was u
how abominable before God is the Empire or Rule of a wicked woman, yea, of a traiteresse and bastard.
So, it was pretty predictable how his meetings with the young queen would go – badly! Knox felt that, given his age, knowledge and preaching skills, he could browbeat the young queen into submission. He said of her:
If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit and an indurate Heart against God and His Truth my judgment faileth me.
But Knox miscalculated. Mary was an attractive, tall (nearly 183 centimetres [6 feet]!) and cultured woman who was also politically astute. She was certainly no pushover. She recognised that the different faiths had to be tolerated; as much as she would have liked, there could be no undoing of the Reformation. As such, she appointed Protestants to the Privy Council and her closest advisors – her half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, and William Maitland, her secretary – were of the Protestant faith. Mary also agreed to practise her Catholicism in private while seeming in public to endorse the victory of Protestantism.
She avoided introducing unpopular taxes that had played a part in bringing down her mother. With a yearly income as dowager queen of France of £30,000, she didn’t have to. In fact, the only national tax she introduced was one to pay for the baptism of her son and heir in 1566.
None of this stopped Knox’s attacks on Mary – they were fairly constant. But Knox himself became the subject of scandal when, in his 50s, he married the 17-year-old daughter of one of his friends!
Finding a husband
Scotland was not Mary’s first choice as a monarch. France was first. While reigning with her husband, Francis II, she had designs on the throne of England, because her grandmother was a sister of Henry VIII. Some Catholics in England felt she had a more legitimate right to the throne than Elizabeth, the daughter of A
Mary considered a few potential suitors. One of them was Don Carlos, son of the king of Spain, but unfortunately, he turned out to be insane. In any case, Elizabeth did not approve of Don Carlos, and she made it clear to Mary that if she wanted to inherit the throne of England, Elizabeth would have the final say regarding who was a suitable candidate for marriage. Elizabeth even suggested her lover, the earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, as a husband for Mary. There was a bit of humiliation involved!
However, a more credible candidate was Mary’s first cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley (the ‘long lad’ as Queen Elizabeth called him; he was more than 183 centimetres [6 feet] tall), a grandson of Margaret Tudor and next in line to the throne should Mary die prematurely. Let’s keep it in the family! The couple married at Holyrood Chapel according to the rites of the Catholic Church on 29 July 1565 – something that met with the disapproval of the Virgin Queen, who imprisoned Darnley’s mother in the Tower of London as an act of revenge. Elizabeth felt the marriage should not have taken place without her permission, because Darnley was both her cousin and an English subject. Any child resulting from the union of Mary and Darnley would have an even stronger claim to the throne of England than their parents did.
The marriage and the prospect of a Catholic dynasty brought an immediate armed response led by Mary’s half-brother, the earl of Moray. This was easily put down by Mary who pledged her own jewels to pay her soldiers. Not a shot was fired in anger in what became known as the Chaseabout Raid. Moray was forced to flee across the border to England.
Mary needed friends, but she made the wrong ones. She called to Catholic Spain for assistance. At home, she spent more and more time with foreigners who were not of noble birth. She gave some of them – such as David Riccio, Franceso de Busso and Sebastien Danelourt – positions of importance. All this alienated moderate Protestants, who had been previously loyal to her.
The murder of David Riccio
Riccio (also spelt Rizzio) arrived in Scotland in 1561 with the ambassador of Savoy. His musical ability immediately won the queen’s favour. Mary liked masque balls, cards and dancing, as well as archery, hunting and golf, and she had a fondness for literature and poetry – she was every inch the Renaissance monarch (see Chapter 9 on the Renaissance). So, there was an immediate rapport between Mary and Riccio, although others at court found him arrogant and conceited.
Darnley, who was only 19, and who was now considered by Mary to be useless on all levels, began to suspect that the relationship between Mary and Riccio was more than sovereign and subject. She was pregnant, and Darnley thought Riccio was the father. Jealousy led Darnley to hatch a plot with several other Scottish nobles to murder Riccio in such a way as to terrorise the queen. On the evening of 9 March 1566, they broke into the supper room of Holyrood Palace where Mary was dining with Riccio and her half-sister, Janet, and in front of Mary, stabbed Riccio 56 times.
It wasn’t just a cuckold’s revenge – Darnley also hoped that the attack would cause Mary to miscarry. She never forgave Darnley for the incident and said to Lord Ruthven that ‘it is within my belly that one day will avenge these cruelties and affronts’.
On 19 June 1566, the future James VI was born in Edinburgh Castle. With witnesses present, Mary made it clear that the father of the child was Darnley. She said:
My Lord God has given you and me a son, begotten by none but you. This is the son who will unite the two kingdoms of Scotland and England.
But there was a problem for Mary: the birth of her son weakened her position – Scotland now had a male heir, and Mary was dispensable. As politically astute as ever, Mary sidefooted her opponents by pardoning the rebels involved in the Chaseabout Raid. In December that year, Mary pardoned the murderers of Riccio. This meant inviting the traitorous Moray back to Scotland.
Darnley has to go