John Knox and the Reformation | Page 9

accounts "to the Scottish Reformer."
It seems, if there be anything in evidence of tone and style, that what
Knox quotes from Foxe in 1561-66 is what Knox himself actually
wrote about 1547-48. Mr. Hill Burton observes in the tract "the mark of
Knox's vehement colouring," and adds, "it is needless to seek in the
account for precise accuracy." In "precise accuracy" many historians
are as sadly to seek as Knox himself, but his peculiar "colouring" is all
his own, and is as marked in the pamphlet on Wishart's trial, which he
cites, as in the "History" which he acknowledged.
There are said to be but few copies of the first edition of the black letter
tract on Wishart's trial, published in London, with Lindsay's "Tragedy
of the Cardinal," by Day and Seres. I regard it as the earliest printed
work of John Knox. {20} The author, when he describes Lauder,

Wishart's official accuser, as "a fed sow . . . his face running down with
sweat, and frothing at the mouth like ane bear," who "spat at Maister
George's face, . . . " shows every mark of Knox's vehement and
pictorial style. His editor, Laing, bids us observe "that all these
opprobrious terms are copied from Foxe, or rather from the black letter
tract." But the black letter tract, I conceive, must be Knox's own. Its
author, like Knox, "indulges his vein of humour" by speaking of friars
as "fiends"; like Knox he calls Wishart "Maister George," and "that
servand of God."
The peculiarities of the tract, good and bad, the vivid familiar manner,
the vehemence, the pictorial quality, the violent invective, are the notes
of Knox's "History." Already, by 1547, or not much later, he was the
perfect master of his style; his tone no more resembles that of his
contemporary and fellow-historian, Lesley, than the style of Mr. J. R.
Green resembles that of Mr. S. R. Gardiner.
CHAPTER III
: KNOX IN ST. ANDREWS CASTLE: THE GALLEYS: 1547-1549
We now take up Knox where we left him: namely when Wishart was
arrested in January 1546. He was then tutor to the sons of the lairds of
Langniddrie and Ormiston, Protestants and of the English party. Of his
adventures we know nothing, till, on Beaton's murder (May 29, 1546),
the Cardinal's successor, Archbishop Hamilton, drove him "from place
to place," and, at Easter, 1547, he with his pupils entered the Castle of
St. Andrews, then held, with some English aid, against the Regent
Arran, by the murderers of Beaton and their adherents. {22} Knox was
not present, of course, at Beaton's murder, about which he writes so
"merrily," in his manner of mirth; nor at the events of Arran's siege of
the castle, prior to April 1547. He probably, as regards these matters,
writes from recollection of what Kirkcaldy of Grange, James Balfour,
Balnaves, and the other murderers or associates of the murderers of the
Cardinal told him in 1547, or later communicated to him as he wrote,
about 1565-66. With his unfortunate love of imputing personal motives,
he attributes the attacks by the rulers on the murderers mainly to the

revengeful nature of Mary of Guise; the Cardinal having been "the
comfort to all gentlewomen, and especially to wanton widows. His
death must be revenged." {23a}
Knox avers that the besiegers of St. Andrews Castle, despairing of their
task, near the end of January 1547 made a fraudulent truce with the
assassins, hoping for the betrayal of the castle, or of some of the leaders.
{23b} In his narrative we find partisanship or very erroneous
information. The conditions were, he says, that (1) the murderers
should hold the castle till Arran could obtain for them, from the Pope, a
sufficient absolution; (2) that they should give hostages, as soon as the
absolution was delivered to them; (3) that they and their friends should
not be prosecuted, nor undergo any legal penalties for the murder of the
Cardinal; (4) that they should meanwhile keep the eldest son of Arran
as hostage, so long as their own hostages were kept. The Government,
however, says Knox, "never minded to keep word of them" (of these
conditions), "as the issue did declare."
There is no proof of this accusation of treachery on the part of Arran, or
none known to me. The constant aim of Knox, his fixed idea, as an
historian, is to accuse his adversaries of the treachery which often
marked the negotiations of his friends.
From this point, the truce, dated by Knox late in January 1547, he
devotes eighteen pages to his own call to the ministry by the castle
people, and to his controversies and sermons in St. Andrews. He then
returns to history, and avers that, about June 21, 1547, the papal
absolution was presented