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 SCOTLAND

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SCOTLAND

Knox returned to Scotland in 1559, and inaugu- rated the work of destruction by a violent sermon which he preached at Perth. There and elsewhere churches and monasteries were attacked and sacked. Troops arrived from France to assist the regent in quelling the insurgent Protestants, while in April, 1560, the English forces, despatched by Elizabeth, invaded Scotland both by land and sea in support of the Congregation. The desecration and destruction of churches and abbeys went on apace; and in the midst of these scenes of strife and violence oc- curred the death of the queen regent, in June, 1560. Less than a month later, a treaty of peace was signed at Edinburgh, the King and Queen of Scots (Mary had married in 1558 Francis, Dauphin of France), granting various concession to the Scottish nobles and people. In pursuance of one of the articles of the treaty, the parliament assembled on 1 August, though without any writ of summons from the sovereign. Although the treaty had specially provided that the religious question at issue should be remitted to the king and queen for settlement, the assemblage voted for the adoption, as the state religion, of the Prot- estant Confession of Faith; four prelates and five temporal peers alone dissenting. Three further statutes respectively abolished papal jurisdiction in Scotland, repealed all former statutes in favour of the Catholic Church, and made it a penal offence, pun- ishable by death on the third conviction, either to say or to hear Mass. All leases of church lands granted by ecclesiastics subsequent to March, 1558, were declared null and void; and thus the destruc- tion of the old religion in Scotland, as far as the hand of man could destroy it, was complete. No time or opportunity was given to the Church to carry out that reform of prevalent abuses which was fore- shadowed in the decrees of her latest councils. As in England the greed of a tyrannical king, so in Scot- land the cupidity of a mercenary nobility, itching to possess themselves of the Church's accumulated wealth, consummated a work which even Protestant historians have described as one of revolution rather than of reformation.

III. Thikd Period: Sixteenth Century to the Present Day. — It does not belong to this article to trace the development of the doctrines and disci- pline of the new religion which supplanted Catholicism in Scotland in 1560 (see Scotland, E.stablished Church of). The aim of the Reformers was to stamp out every outward vestige of the ancient Faith before the return of the Catholic queen, now a widow; and the demolition of churches and monasteries con- tined unabated during 1561. In August of that year Mary arrived in Edinburgh, and was warmly wel- comed by her subjects; but it was only with the greatest difficulty that she obtained toleration for herself and her attendants to practise their religion, anti-Catholic riots being of frequent occurrence. The few Catholic nobles, mostly belonging to the north, found themselves more and more withdrawn from Catholic life, while the prelates and clergy were in constant personal danger. Some champions of the Faith there still were, notably Ninian Winzet and Quintin Kennedy, ready to risk life and liberty in the public defence of their Faith; and Mary herself did all in her power to cultivate close relations with the Holy See. Her ambassador in France was Arch- bishop Beaton of Glasgow. Pope Pius IV sent her the Golden Rose in 1561, and dispatched Nicholas of Gouda, a Jesuit, as nuncio to Scotland in the same year. Only one bishop ventured to receive the papal envoy, who sent to Rome a pitiful report of the re- ligious condition of Scotland. Mary's marriage to Darnley, a Catholic noble, who was proclaimed King of Scots, afforded a fresh pretext to the disaffected P*rotestant lords to intrigue against the throne; and

headed by Moray, the queen's own half-brother, they openly revolted against her. Their armed rising was unsuccessful, but their murderous plots continued, and Rizzio, Mary's confidential secretary, and her husband Darnley were both murdered within lesa than ayear's interval. Theseizureof Mary's person by Bothwell, her husband's assassin, and her subsequent marriage to him, belong to her personal history.

A month after her marriage Mary was imprisoned by her traitorous subjects at Lochleven, and a few weeks later, in July, 1567, she was forced to sign her abdication, and virtually ceased to be Queen of Scotland. Her baby son, James VI, was hurriedly crowned at Stirhng, and in August, Moray, now regent, returned to Scotland from Paris, where he had been in communication with the French Protes- tant leaders. The penal laws against Catholics were now enforced with fresh severity, the Bishop of Dunblane and many other ecclesiastics being heavily fined, and in some cases outlawed for exercising their ministry. Moray's first parliament renewed and ratified all the ecclesiastical enactments of 1560; but his efforts to conclude an alliance with England and with France were alike unsuccessful. He was also confronted with a strong body of nobles adherent to the cause of Mary, who by their aid escaped from her prison; but in May, 1568, her forces were defeated by those of the regent at Langside, and the unfortunate queen fled over the border to English soil, which she was not to quit till her tragic death nineteen years later. The regent, after the abortive conferences at York and Westminster dealing with the charges against his sister, returned to Scotland, and con- tinued, with the support of the general assembly of the Kirk, his severe measures against the Catholics. Every indignity short of death was inflicted on the priests who were apprehended in various parts of the kingdom; but whilst intriguing to obtain possession of the queen's person, Moray was suddenly himself cut off by the bullet of an assassin. Lennox, who succeeded him as regent, proved a vigorous antago- nist of Mary's adherents; and one of the foremost of these. Archbishop Hamilton, was hanged at Stir- ling after a mock trial lasting three days. Robert Hay, chosen to succeed him by the few remaining members of the chapter, was never consecrated, and the primatial see remained unoccupied by a Catholic prelate for upwards of three centuries. Mar suc- ceeded Lennox as regent, and Morton followed Mar, being chosen on the very day of John Knox's death (24 Nov., 1572). The iron hand of both pressed heavily on the Catholics, and we find the Privy Council publishing in 1574 a list of outlaws, including several bishops, any dealing with whom is forbidden under pain of death. All Papists cited before the civil tribunals are to be required to renounce their religion, subscribe to Presbyterianism, and receive the Protestant communion. The persecution at home had had the effect of driving many distinguished Scottish Catholics to the continent. Paris had been since 1560 the residence of Archbishop Beaton of Glasgow, and of the able and learned Bishop John Leslie of Ross, both devoted friends and counsellors of Queen Mary.

The hopes that the young King James, who had been baptized and crowned with Catholic rites, might grow up in the religion of his ancestors, were destroyed by his signing in 1581 a formal profession of his adherence to Protestantism and detestation of Popery. This did not prevent him from entering into personal communication later with Pope Gregory XIII, when he thought his throne in danger from the ambition of Queen Elizabeth. He promised at the same time conciliatory measures towards his Catholic subjects, and affected solicitude for his unfortunate mother; but he never made any practical efforts to