effigy at the market cross of St. Andrews, on the 28th day of May. David Straiton of Lauriston,1 and Norman Gourlay a secular priest, were condemned by a Council held at the Abbey of Holyrood-the king presiding, clothed in scarlet as a Scottish judge; and were burned the next day at the Rood of Greenside near the northern top of the Calton Hill, that the inhabitants of Fife might see the fire, and be "stricken with terror." Similar scenes followed in the West of Scotland. Two young men, one a Franciscan and the other a youth. from England, suffered in Glasgow. George Buchanan, the prince of Latinists, who had enraged the ecclesiastics by his Franciscanus and his Somnium, made his escape from prison in St. Andrews. The Duke of Norfolk, writing from Berwick, on the 29th of March, informs Crumwell, "Daily cometh unto me some gentlemen and some clerks which do flee out of Scotland, as they say, for reading the Scriptures in English, saying that if they were taken they should be put to execution. I give them gentle words and some money." After the melancholy death of the James V, on the 14th of December, 1542, the weak Earl of Arran became Protector. But two factions at once sprang up: the clerical one assembling at Perth sent among other stipulations to Edinburgh that the New Testament in the native tongue should not go abroad. The stipulations were refused, and when Parliament met at Edinburgh on the 12th of March, 1543, it was proposed, on the motion of Lord Maxwell, that "all the lieges in this realm may read the Scriptures in our native tongue." The New Testament had been now about seventeen years in the country, and it was time that it should be unfettered. In one of these sudden turns of affairs so common in Scottish history, Cardinal Beaton was flung into prison on a charge of forging a will in the late king's name. But Chancellor Dunbar Archbishop of Glasgow rising in his place dissented simpliciter, in his own name and in the name of the prelates of the realm that were present. He and his party wished the measure to be postponed till a provincial times, and raising an action of "declarator," he had his sentence reversed, and his estates restored. 1 The Laird of Lauriston was the first of his social rank that suffered. State Papers (Henry VIII),V,154. xxx.] FREE CIRCULATION IN SCOTLAND. 417 council of all the clergy should discuss the question, "to advise and conclude thereupon, if the same be necessary to be had in the vulgar tongue, to be used among the Queen's lieges or not," and thereupon he "craved instruments." The Bible was produced in this meeting of parliament, and its opponents yielded so far as to allow that it might be read if the translation were true. They were challenged to produce a fault, and they instanced the use of "love" instead of "charity"; but when asked what the difference between the terms was, they were dumb. The opposition was vain, and an Act was passed to the following effect: "It is statute and ordained that it shall be lawful to all our sovereign lady's lieges to have the Holy Writ, both the New Testament and the Old, in the vulgar tongue-in the English or Scottish,1 of a good and true translation, and that they shall incur no crimes for the having or reading of the same; provided always that no man dispute or hold opinions, under the pains contained in the Acts of Parliament." The Dean of Restalrig "long repugned," and certain "old bosses along with him." The commissioners of burghs and part of the nobility then demanded that it might be "permitted to every man to use the translation of the Old and New Testament which they had, till the prelates and kirkmen set forth a translation more correct. But all compromise was negatived; every man was made free to read "the Scriptures in his own or the English tongue," and all Acts made to the contrary were abolished. No time was lost; proclamation was made at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, and letters were sent through the country, enjoining proclamation to be made in the more important towns, among which Glasgow, the episcopal seat of the prime opposer and protester, is not mentioned. The regent's proclamation, 19th March, 1543, was in the following terms: 2 “GUBERNATOR. "CLERK OF REGISTER. It is our will and we charge you, that ye gar proclaim this day in the mercat cross of Edinburgh, the Acts made in our Sovereign lady's Parliament, that should 1 "Scottish" means here the Gaelic tongue. 2 Act. Parl., II, 415. VOL. I. 2 D be proclaimed and given forth to her lieges; and in special, the Act made for having of the New Testament in vulgar tongue, with certain additions, and thereafter give forth the copies thereof authentic, as effeiris, to all them that will desire the samyn, and insert this our command and charge in the books of Parliament for your warrant. Subscrivit with our own hand at Edinburgh, the 19th day of March, the year of God 1543 years. "JAMES G." 1 The general possession of the Book had nursed the desire to have the reading of it removed from the list of felonies. It is difficult to say what number of copies of the Scriptures was printed abroad, for so many of them bore the London imprint, and the eye of the initiated alone can recognize the differences. The English Parliament at this time was forbidding the Bible to all the industrial classes, who were not to read it on pain of a month's imprisonment. No mention was made of issuing any Bibles from the press in Scotland, or of any measures conducing to it, and none were printed there for more than thirty years afterwards. No one can doubt, therefore, that there had been a very large importation of Testaments, probably also of the editions of Coverdale, Matthew, and of the Great Bible. That the Bible was very common twenty-five years afterwards may be inferred from the words of John Knox. Describing the result of the Act which removed all restriction, he relates, with great glee, "This was no small victory of Christ. Jesus fighting against the conjured enemies of His verity: not small comfort to such as before were holden in such bondage, that they durst not have read the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, nor articles of their faith in the English tongue, but they should have been accused of heresy. Then might have been seen the Bible lying upon almost every gentleman's table. The New Testament was borne about in many men's hands. Some would touch their familiars with it and say, 'Thou hast been under my bed-feet these ten years." "2 1 James Hamilton, second Earl of Arran. xxx.] GEORGE WISHART. 419 But a crisis soon came; Arran recanted, Beaton was set at liberty, the work of murder again commenced, and many fled from suffering. Adam Wallace, who could read the Bible in three languages, was seized, and burned on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh. The mode of destroying heretics was somewhat changed. Four men, instead of being burned, were hanged at Perth, and a woman, the wife of one of the four sufferers, after giving the infant in her arms to a sympathizing neighbour, was drowned in the Tay. George Wishart, a younger son of the laird of Pitarrow Justice Clerk in 1513, had, when master of a school in Montrose, been guilty of the heinous crime of reading the Greek New Testament with his scholars. On being summoned to appear before Hepburn Bishop of Brechin, he fled, in 1538, into England. He is called, in the records of the city of Bristol, the "obstinate Scot"; and having preached in St. Nicholas Church some form of theological error, he was seized, sent to London, and tried and condemned by Cranmer - when he recanted and bore his faggot. Returning to Scotland about 1544, he discoursed from his English New Testament, and was arrested, and burned on the 1st of March, 1546, at St. Andrews; the windows and battlements of the castle opposite the stake being fitted with silk hangings and cushions to enable the cardinal and his associates to enjoy the spectacle. The country was now kept in wretched turmoil by armed feuds and factions, and contending parties bent on supremacy put to hazard life and estates. Though the aristocracy of Scotland had been little better than a set of coronetted savages, yet change of religious opinion began first among them and the landed gentry; but the commons awoke to consciousness and newness of life " with the dawn of the Reformation, for the truths of Scripture had not been lost upon them, 1 Dr. M'Crie, from misreading one letter of a single word in the Bristol Record, gave currency to the story that Wishart recanted what he had preached against the papacy. But the heresy which he retracted is not very intelligible; it seems to have been a serious and unscriptural error regarding the merit of Christ as a Redeemer. Life of Knox, p. 481. CHAPTER XXXI. ΚΙ ING HENRY died on the morning of the 28th of January, 1547, and the accession of Edward VI gave immediate ascendancy to the Reforming party. According to common report the young monarch manifested great veneration for the Divine Word, and an English Bible is said to have been used at his coronation. When three swords were presented, the symbols of his being the royal head of three kingdoms, he told his courtiers that another sword was yet wanting, the Bible"the sword" of the Spirit-which with the greatest reverence he commanded to be brought and carried before him. Sir Thomas More had alleged that if the Bible were in common use, it would be sometimes employed as a footstool; but the prince in his earlier years, "when proffered a boss-plate Bible to stand upon to heighten him, with holy indignation refused it." The old incubus had now passed away, and the people breathed freely. The possession of the Bible was no longer restricted by statute; every one, whatever his social position, might have it and study it. It was free to all as the light and air of heaven. But the minds of the rulers in church and state were so occupied with the guidance of the changes passing over them that no new translation was undertaken during this reign of six years and a half. At the same time the instructions of Archbishop Cranmer to the two foreigners, Fagius and Bucer, during their stay with him at Lambeth prior to their installation as professors at Cambridge, would almost imply that the idea of a new translation was before his mind. His words are, It had been a great while his pious and most earnest desire 1 Heylin's Reformation, vol. I, p. 27, Cambridge, 1849. |