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In Search of the Godly Magistrate in Reformation Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

K. M. Brown
K. M. Brown
Affiliation:
Department of Scottish History, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9AL
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Extract

The godly magistrate was an essential figure in the progress of the Protestant Reformation throughout Europe, and Scotland with its very powerful nobility was no exception. Prophetic preachers, discontented lairds, cosmopolitan merchants, and English troops all contributed to Protestant success in 1560, but there can be little doubt that it was the Lords of the Congregation themselves, the nobility, who made the Reformation happen. Furthermore, only by harnessing lordship to Protestantism could John Knox and his colleagues ensure that the fortuitous circumstances which provided the protesters with their opportunity in 1560– the fusing of patriotic and religious ideals – could be built on to ensure the future of a reformed kirk. The godly magistrate provided that combination of theological truth and practical reality which could translate the ideas of the new Church's clerical leaders into practice, particularly in the context of a hostile Crown.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 553 - 581
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 For the godly magistrate in Scotland see Wormald, J. M., ‘“Princes” and the regions in the Scottish Reformation’, in MacDougall, N. (ed.), Church, Politics and Society in Scotland, 1408–1929, Edinburgh 1983, 65–84Google Scholar; Lynch, M., ‘Calvinism in Scotland, 1559–1638’, in Prestwich, M. (ed.), International Calvinism 1541–1715, Oxford 1985, 241–7;Google ScholarCameron, J., ‘Faith and faction - conflicting loyalties in the Scottish Reformation’, in Hurst, M. (ed.), Stales, Countries and Provinces, London 1986, 72–90.Google Scholar

2 John Knox made clear the responsibilities of Protestant lords in his 1558 Appelation to the nobility and estates of Scotland, see The Works of John Knox, ed. D. Laing, 6 vols (Wodrow Society xii, 1846–52), iv. 494–6. The godly magistrate subsequently had a crucial role in the 1560 Reformation Parliament, J. K. Cameron, The First Book of Discipline, Edinburgh 1972, 62, and their importance was re-emphasised in the 1570s, Kirk, J., The Second Book of Discipline, Edinburgh 1980, 64–5Google Scholar, 213–16. Calvin himself asserted that magistrates were ‘the most sacred and by far the most honourable of all stations in mortal life’: Calvin, J., Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Beveridge, H., Edinburgh 1949Google Scholar, ii. 654.

3 The nobility were to be ‘counscllours to their King, fathers of his peiple and defenders and meanteiners of his Kirk’: quoted in Wormald, j. M., Court, Kirk and Community, Scotland 1470–1625, London 1981, 138.Google Scholar The political conservatism of the reformers was reflected in the Second Book of Discipline, which insisted that ‘It is proper to kings, princes and magistrates to be callit lord is and dominatouris over thair subjectis quhom thay governe civilie’: Kirk, op. cit. 168. Back in 1560 the First Book had drawn attention to the limitation which the Word of God placed on magisterial authority, Cameron, op. cit. 86. On nobility itself Knox had written in 1558 that the nobility received ‘honour, tribute and homage at Goddis Commandimcnt, not be reasson of your birth and progenc… but be reassoun of your office and dewtie’: Works i. 272. Of course there had always been a debate on the true nature of honour, and this received a new impetus at the Reformation, see K. M. Brown, Bloodfeud in Scotland, 1573–1625: violence, justice and politics in an early modern society, 1986, csp. pp. 203–6. For the insistence on Protestant magistrates see, The Booke of the Universall Kirk of Scotland: Acts and Proceedings, of the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland from the year MDLX (hereinafter cited as BUK), ed. T. Thomson 4 vols (Bannatyne Club lxxxi, and Maitland Club xlix, 1894–6), i. 5; D. Calderwood, The History of the Kirk of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson, 8 vols (Wodrow Society vii, 1842–9), v. 140. However, King James himself admitted in Basilikon Doron that it was impossible to interfere with heritable jurisdictions (and in Scotland most criminal courts were held heritably), Mcllwaine, C. H. (ed.), The Political Works of James I, New York 1965, 26.Google Scholar The question of finance is dealt with below.

4 For example, in 1563 and 1565 the General Assembly petitioned the nobility about Sabbath observance and sexual behaviour, BUK i. 58; Calderwood History ii. 287. Noblemen were also involved in the revising of the First Book ii. 160, 247. On this whole question see Donaldson, G., The Scottish Reformation, Cambridge 1960, 140–1.Google Scholar The nobility were initially jealous of their place in the new Church, while the ministers were on the whole keen to encourage noble attendance at the General Assembly, Calderwood, op. cit. ii. 159; BUK i. 265. However, few bothered after 1576, and the assembly abandoned the attempt to have the nobility formally represented there, Cowan, I. B., ‘Church and society in Post-Reformation Scotland’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society xvii (1971), 186–8.Google Scholar For the 1590 band, Calderwood, op. cit. v. 233–5; and the others, Knox, op. cit. ii. 347–50; Melville, J., The Diary of Mr James Meluill, 1556–1601, ed. Kinloch, J. R. (Bannatyne Club xxxiv, 1829), 24–3.Google Scholar

5 A point which was recognised elsewhere. As one English minister wrote, ‘Take away the magistrate and there would remain no outward worship of God’; Collinson, P., ‘Magistracy and ministry: a Suffolk Miniature’, in Knox, R. B. (ed.), Reformation, Conformity and Dissent: essays in honour of Geoffrey Nuttall, London 1977, 73.Google Scholar

6 Kirk, Second Book, 169–72, 213–16; Calderwood, History iv. 506–7, 518–19. For the role of the godly magistrate in general in the Church see Donaldson, op. cit. 131–41; Cameron, First Book, 62–7; Kirk, Second Book, 57–65; Mullen, O. G., Episcopacy in Scotland: the history of an idea, Edinburgh 1986, 61–4Google Scholar; Mason, R., ‘Kingship and commonweal: political thought and ideology in Reformation Scotland’, unpubl. PhD diss., Edinburgh 1983, 286–302.Google Scholar

7 Kirk, op. cit. 169–72, 213–16.

8 Calderwood, op. cit. iv. 504–47, quote is from 507.

9 BUK i. 120.

10 Calderwood, op. cit. ii. 195, 513–15, 546; iv. 514; Spottiswoode, J., History of the Church of Scotland, eds Napier, M. and Russell, M., 3 vols (Spottiswoode Society vi, 1847–51), ii. 121–2Google Scholar; The Historic and Life of King James the Sext, ed. Thomson, T. (Bannatyne Club xiii, 1825), 47.Google Scholar Naturally, Moray had his critics, see e.g. Herries, Lord, Historical Memoirs of the Reign of Mary Queen of Scots, ed. Pitcairn, R. (Abbotsford Club vi, 1836), 54.Google ScholarLee, M., James Stewart Earl of Moray, New York 1953Google Scholar, has little to say about Moray's role as a godly magistrate. For an example of how this can be done see Cross, C., The Puritan Earl. The life of Henry Hastings, third earl of Huntingdon, 1536–1595, London 1966.Google Scholar

11 Calderwood, History iii. 393–4. For Morton in general see Hewitt, G. R., Scotland under Morton, 1572–80, Edinburgh 1982Google Scholar; also Calderwood, op. cit. iii. 395–6; Melville, Diary, 47–8.

12 For Glencairn's Epistle, Knox, Works i. 72.

13 Spottiswoode, History ii. 199.

14 On this see Donaldson, G., ‘Lord Chancellor Glamis and Theodore Beza’, in G. Donaldson, Scottish Church History, Edinburgh 1985, 120–36.Google Scholar Calderwood, History iii. 397; Melville, op. cit. 43, 47.

15 ‘The Apology of Mr. Patrick Galloway’, in The Bannatyne Miscellany, eds Scott, Sir Walter and Laing, D. (Bannatyne Club xix, 1827), i/i. 111–28.Google Scholar

16 One who did live until c. 1592, but who was certainly not as powerful as those already discussed, was Andrew, second Lord Ochiltree, another ‘Good Lord’ who had sent his son and servants out onto the streets of Edinburgh in 1561 to break up masking and dancing, and whose daughter married the elderly John Knox, Calderwood, op. cit. ii. 164; and see Paul, J. Balfour (ed.), The Scots Peerage, 9 vols, Edinburgh 1904–14, vi. 512–14Google Scholar; Knox, op. cit. ii. 320.

17 Scots Peerage i. 194–6; Calderwood, op. cit. iv. 680; Spottiswoode, History ii. 389–90. See, too, Hume, D., A General History of Scotland from the Year 767 to the Death of King James, London 1657, 399. Spottiswoode, op. cit. ii. 389–90.Google Scholar

18 Melville, Diary, 169. Mar was also on good terms with Robert Bruce, see Calderwood, History vi. 93–5.

19 This former hero of the Church was then described by his father's old minister, now a royal chaplain, as ‘a deip dissimulat hipocrcit! anc profound Atheist! ane incarnall devill, in the cot of anc Angel!’: Bannatyne Miscellany i. 143. However, many of the leading presbyterian ministers refused to believe the king's version of events.

20 Cowan, ‘Church and Society’, 189–91, emphasises the importance of the lairds, while Wormald, ‘Princes’, 71–2, discusses their relationship with the magnates in the context of religious loyalties.

21 Melville, op. cit. 221; and see Lee, M., John Maitland of Thirlstane and the Foundation of the Stewart Despotism in Scotland, Princeton 1959, 156, 293–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a letter from Maitland to Bruce see Calderwood, History vi. 93–5.

22 Spottiswoode, History ii. 412.

23 Scots Peerage ii. 591–2.

24 Calderwood, op. cit. v. 339. Davidson's comments were fairly accurate, Brown, Bloodfeud, 20–1 on age, and 184–207 on other criticisms.

25 Hume, History, 423, 428–30, where Angus argued that ‘to save an honest man against his will, is commonly regarded with slender thanks’.

26 Melville, Diary, 211.

27 Calderwood, History v. 515. In 1606 Andrew Melville denounced the king's ‘degenerat’ councillors whom he contrasted with the ‘antiant nobilitie’ who had once protected the Church. The search for someone to fill the place of Moray, Morton or Angus was not so very different from that in England to find another Leicester, Collinson, P., The Religion of the Protestants: the Church in English society 1559–1625, Oxford 1982, 187.Google Scholar For an estimate of the number of committed Protestant lords by c. 1600 see Estimate of the Scottish Nobility During the Minority of James the Sixth, ed. Rogers, C. (Grampian Club vi, 1873), 77–80.Google Scholar

28 Scots Peerage iii. 35–6; v. 397–402; Calderwood, History ii. 143; iv. 434; Moysie, D., Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland from 1577 to 1603, ed. Dennistoun, J. (Bannatyne Club xxxix, 1830), 57, 130Google Scholar; Melville, op. cit. 272; see Lindsay, Lord, Lives of the Lindsays, 3 vols, London 1849, pp. i–ii.Google Scholar

29 Scots Peerage ii. 514–18. The same continuity can be found in the religious loyalties of English Puritan families, Cliffe, J. T., Puritan Gentry: the great Puritan families of early Stuart England, London 1984, 12.Google Scholar

30 For example, when Knox visited the earl of Glencairn's house at Finlayston in 1556 the earl, his wife, two of their sons and a number of their friends all attended communion, Knox, Works i. 250. However, there is no evidence of the household consistories found in France, Harding, R. H., Anatomy of a Power Elite. The provincial governors of early modern France, London 1978, 86.Google Scholar On the godly household in England see Morgan, j., Godly Learning: Puritan attitudes to learning and education, 1560–1640, Cambridge 1986.Google Scholar

31 Cameron, First Book, 185. This was never given the statutory backing that Martin Bucer had recommended, ibid. n. 21.

32 Calderwood, History v. 436, 446. For the apocalyptic context see Williamson, A. H., Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI: the apocalypse, the Union and the shaping of Scotland's public culture, Edinburgh 1979.Google Scholar

33 Spottiswoode, History ii. 121; for Buchanan see Lee, Moray, 283.

34 Calderwood, History ii. 312; The Miscellany of the Wodrow Society, ed. Laing, D. (Wodrow Society xi, 1844), i. 284Google Scholar; and see Davidson's criticisms of noble households in Calderwood, op. cit. v. 276. In England, too, lords were expected to oversee the religion of their tenants, e.g. Cliffe, Puritan Gentry, 9.

35 Melville, Diary, 124–7; Hume, History, 360–3. Angus was particularly fond of the recent Latin translations of the Bible by John Immanuel Tremellius and Franciscus Junius which were then in vogue in Calvinist circles. While at Newcastle Angus and his friends agreed to a programme of four sermons a week, two on Sunday lasting an hour and a half each, and hour-long ones on Wednesdays and Fridays; twice every day there were to be half-hour prayer meetings which would include expository teaching sessions; each dinner and supper was to have a thanksgiving followed by a reading from a chapter of the Bible and a psalm; one week of every month was to be set aside for abstinence and public repentance, and in that week the Lord's Supper would be celebrated on the Sunday along with other additional religious exercises.

36 Calderwood, op. cit. v. 409–10.

37 Row, J., History of the Kirk of Scotland, ed. Laing, D. (Wodrow Society iv. 1842), 171–2Google Scholar; Calderwood, op. cit. v. 408–9. For James's education see Willson, D. H., King James VI and I, London 1956, 18–27.Google Scholar As a child James benefited from the rigorous and orthodox teaching of George Buchanan and the Geneva-educated Peter Young, but from Morton's fall in 1580 until the removal of Arran in 1585 there had been considerable concern in the Church over the libertine atmosphere in the royal household.

38 BUK iii. 983–6.

39 Cowan, I. B., The Scottish Reformation. Church and Society in sixteenth-century Scotland, London 1982, 199–204.Google Scholar On the educational and cultural background in Scotland see Durkan, J., ‘Education in the century of the Reformation’, in McRoberts, D. (ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation, Glasgow 1962, 145–68;Google Scholar J. Durkan, ‘The cultural background in the sixteenth century’, in ibid. 274–331; idem and J. Kirk, The University of Glasgow, 1451–1577, Glasgow 1977; Cant, R. G., The University of St. Andrews, Edinburgh 1946, 45–68Google Scholar; Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community, 171.

40 This was in spite of warnings from the likes of Thomas Smeaton, a former Jesuit who revealed how the Catholics deliberately exploited this opportunity to influence young noblemen, Melville, Diary, 58.

41 On Gray see Calderwood, History iv. 253.

42 Bannatyne Miscellany i. 193; Calderwood, History vi. 67.

43 Hume, History, 360–2; Angus was in England in 1581–2 and again in 1583–5, and became friendly with Leicester, Walsingham and Sir Philip Sydney, who allowed him to read the Arcadia in manuscript. One possible common intellectual denominator between Angus and Sidney was George Buchanan, a man much patronised by Angus's uncle Morton, and who had contacts with Leicester and Sidney, see Phillips, J. E., ‘George Buchanan and the Sidney circle’, Hunlington Library Quarterly xii (1948–9), 23–55.Google Scholar See, too, G. Donaldson, ‘Scottish Presbyterian exiles in England 1584–8’, in idem, Scottish Church History, 186, for Angus's other English ‘brethern’. On English influences on the education of Scottish noblemen see idem, ‘Foundations of Anglo-Scottish union’, in ibid. 148–51; Brown, K. M., ‘The price of friendship: the “well affected” and English economic clientage in Scodand before 1603’, in Mason, R. A. (ed.), Scotland and England, 1286–1815, Edinburgh 1987, 141, 157.Google Scholar

44 Melville, op. cit. 129–30.

45 Knox, Works iv. 491.

46 Melville, Diary, 130. These sorts of criticism were part of a wider Renaissance genre; see Hexter, J. H., ‘The education of the aristocracy in the Renaissance’, in idem, Reappraisals in History, London 1961, 46–7Google Scholar, and Stone, L., The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1642, Oxford 1965, 672–6Google Scholar, and on aristocratic religion, 725–45.

47 Colville wrote that noblemen were ‘permittit be thair tutors to live a libertine lyfe in thair youth’, thus incapacitating them for their role as magistrates in later years, Historic, 182. For the Assembly, Calderwood, History v. 411.

48 Hume, History, 429–30. Angus spent some time at St Andrews University from 1570, and the Regent Morton, his uncle, later employed a private tutor to instruct him. To his own great regret in later life Angus had shown little interest in learning at this time, believing, like most young noblemen, that ‘Letters are…oncly necessary and usefull for mean men, who intend to live by them, and make profession of some art or Science for their maintenance, but [are] no wayes either suitable or requisite in Noblemen, and such as are of any eminent rank or degree’: ibid. 360.

49 Melville, Diary, 50–1; Sir Melville, J., Memoirs of His Own Life, 1549–93, ed. Thomson, T. (Bannatyne Club xviii, 1827), 222.Google Scholar

50 Doughty, D. W., ‘The library of James Stewart, earl of Moray, 1531–1570’, Innes Review xxi (1970), 17–29.Google Scholar

51 Scots Peerage v. 616. Spottiswoode, History ii. 306.

52 Calderwood, History vi. 67. Also of interest is J. Durkan, ‘James, third earl of Arran: the hidden years’, Scottish Historical Review (hereinafter cited as SHR) (1986), 154–66. Scottish noblemen were very much part of a wider aristocratic culture, and there was little to distinguish their education from that of their English or continental counterparts. On the latter see Hexter, ‘Education of the aristocracy’, 45–70; Stone. Crisis of the Aristocracy, 672–724; Morgan, Godly Learning.

53 Calderwood, op. cit. iv. 726–8.

54 Cameron, First Book, 173; see, also Kirk, Second Book, 233. On the practical implementation of this see Lenman, B., ‘The limits of Godly discipline in the early modern period with particular reference to England and Scotland’, in Greyerz, K. von (ed.), Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800, London 1984, 124–45Google Scholar; Foster, W. R., The Church before the Covenants. The Church of Scotland 1586–1638, Edinburgh 1975Google Scholar; Kirk, J., Stirling Presbytery Records, 1581–1587, Edinburgh 1981.Google Scholar

55 BUK i. 252–3. Sec Cliffe, Puritan Gentry, 10, where he quotes Richard Baxter commenting on noblemen who ‘have far stronger temptations to divert you’.

56 ‘Extracts from the Register of the Presbytery of Glasgow’, in Miscellany of the Mai Hand Club, Mailland Miscellany, ed. Dennistoun, J. and Macdonald, A. (Maitland Club xxvA, 1834), i/2. 82.Google Scholar Just how often noblemen did attend church is unknown, but in 1585 William Knollys contrasted the faithfulness of Angus and Lord Hamilton with the king and most of the court who preferred to go hunting rather than attend church, Bain, J., Calendar of State Papers Relating to Scotland and Mary Queen of Scots 1547–1603, 13 vols, Edinburgh 1898–1969, viii. 157.Google Scholar

57 Calderwood, History v. 159, 161–2; Melville, Diary, 47.

58 Calderwood, op. cit. v. 338. For more of the same see Brown, Bloodfeud, 184–207.

59 Melville, op. cit. 186. For ‘A Sermon Upon the Second Chapter of Second Timothy’ which Bruce preached that day see Sermons by the Rev Robert Bruce, ed. Cunningham, W. (Wodrow Society vi, 1843), 345–66.Google Scholar Naturally, Melville saw Bothwell's later misfortunes as a result of his having scorned God on this occasion.

60 Kirk, Stirling Presbytery, 115–16, 119–20, 207–8, 211–12. On the whole, noblemen did not participate in local church courts, Cowan, ‘Church and society’, 187. Part of their problem was that, while submission to the Church was demeaning, standing apart from it and allowing others to dominate it weakened their local control, Wormald, J. M., Lords and Men in Scotland: bonds of Manrent, 1442–1603, Edinburgh 1985.Google Scholar 163; idem, ‘Princes’, 78–9.

61 On this apparent obsession with sexual behaviour see, for example, G. Parker, ‘The “Kirk by law established”and the origins of “the taming of Scotland”: St Andrews 1559–1600’, in L. Lencman (ed.), Perspectives in Scottish Social History - essays in honour of Rosalind Milckison, Aberdeen 1989 (forthcoming). I am grateful to Professor Parker for allowing me to read the manuscript of this essay. Also Kirk, op. cit. See, too, the note in Wormald, ‘Princes’, 82. The Church's interest was not only a consequence of a desire to punish sin; there was also a very real concern with the rights of the unborn child and with the interests of the unmarried mother.

62 Calderwood, History ii. 42, 162; Knox, Works ii. 315; Melville, Memoirs, 250. Scots Peerage, passim. Morton's wife was a lunatic, which perhaps explains his sexual behaviour. The decline in the public acceptability of bastards was certainly not peculiar to Scotland, Stone, L., The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800, London 1977, 502–3Google Scholar, 612–15; Laslett, P., Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations, Cambridge 1978, 102–59.Google Scholar

63 Knox, op. cit. ii. 533.

64 Ibid. 314.

65 Maitland Miscellany i/t. 71, 74, 76, 82.

66 Calderwood, History ii. 397; Historie, 85; Knox, Works ii. 377–8; Scots Peerage i. 342–3.

67 Scots Peerage. For Eglinton, ibid. iii. 444; iv. 370; for Sutherland, viii. 593; for Seton, viii. 593; for Torthorwald, ii. 394. The dates of the divorces were 1562, 1572, 1573, 1574, before 1581, 1581, 1585, 1587, before 1609, 1612, 1615, before 1618, and 1622. That there were no divorces between 1587 and 1609 seems significant, given that the presbyterians did not immediately displace the bishops in 1585 and as a fully working diocesan episcopacy was not restored until 1610.

68 Ibid. i. 196–7; vii. 294; Hume, History, 360. CSP Scot vi. 537, 552, 562; viii. 637; Moysie, Memoirs, 31.

69 Scots Peerage i. 196–7; vii. 294; Hume, History, 360; CSP Scot vi. 537, 552, 562; viii. 637; Moysie, Memoirs, 31.

70 Knox, Works ii. 320.

71 Hume, History, 367–8, 410–11, 414, 428. If this gives the impression that Angus was merely lazy or cowardly, he was not, and he served as a vigorous lieutenant and warden on the borders as well as being an active participant in a number of raids and coups during the unstable years 1578–85.

72 Brown, Bloodfeud, 189, and ch. vii. Religion by itself did not lead to feuding, but the Reformation did indirectly contribute to an increase in feuding, as a result of the general instability and due to the many disputes over secularised teinds and over seating arrangements in parish churches, ibid. 67–8. 71–2.

73 On patronage, J. Kirk, ‘The exercise of ecclesiastical patronage by the Crown, 1560–1572’, in I. B. Cowan and D. Shaw, Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland, Edinburgh 1983, 93–113; J. Kirk, ‘Royal and lay patronage’, in MacDougall. Church, Politics and Society, 127–50; E. Finnie, ‘The House of Hamilton: patronage, politics and the Church in the Reformation period’, Innes Review xxxvi (1985), 3–28; Hewitt, Morton, 82–116; Wormald, ‘Princes’, 68–70. Until 1587 the bulk of ecclesiastical patronage was in Crown hands, but the Crown itself was dominated by noble factions until the later 1580s. For a comparison with England see C. Cross, ‘Noble patronage in the Elizabethan Church’, Historical Journal iii (1960), 1–16.

74 Knox, Works ii. 128–9.

75 Others claimed that ‘everie erle, lord and barroun tuik up all the landis, abbasies, bishopries to thame selffis quhilk sould have sustenit the puir peppil’, and that the ‘insatiable sacrilegius avarice of Erles, Lords and Gentlemen’ was to blame for the stunted development of the Church's educational and social programme, Herries, History, 55; Kirk, ‘Royal and lay patronage’, 130; Melville, Diary, 129–30.

76 Quoted in Kirk, art. cit. 135; Hewitt, Morion, 83–99.

77 Calderwood, History ii. 470.

78 Paul, J. B. and Thomson, J. M. (eds), Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum, 8 vols, Edinburgh 1882–97, 1546–1580, 557 no. 2125,Google Scholar 747 no. 2737; M. Livingston and others (eds), Registrum Secreti Sigilli Regum Scotorum (hereinafter cited as RSS), Edinburgh 1908–, vii. 421 no. 2368, 267–8 no. 1669; viii. 538 no. 2085; Cowan, I. B. and Easson, D. E., (eds), Medieval Religious Houses, Scotland, London 1976; 213, 215–216,Google Scholar 218. For his other known religious patronage sec Reg. Mag. Sig., 572 no. 2180; RSS viii. 55–6 no. 336, 55 no. 335, 60 no. 538, gi no. 549, 104 no. 620. I am grateful to Dr James Kirk for his advice on ecclesiastical patronage.

79 Knox, op. cit. ii. 163.

80 Melville, Diary, 130. On the general question of poor relief in post-Reformation Scotland see Cowan, Scottish Reformation, 193–7; R. Mitchison. ‘The making of the Old Scottish Poor Law’, Past and Present lxiii (1974), 58–93. Of related interest is Sanderson, M., Scottish Rural Society in the 16th Century, Edinburgh 1982, ch. xiGoogle Scholar, which discusses evictions.

81 F. Heal, ‘The idea of hospitality in early modern England’, Past and Present cii (1984), 66–93.

82 Spottiswoode, History ii. 121; Historic, 151.

83 Calderwood, History v. 382.

84 The First Book had complained that 'some Gentlemen are now as cruell over thair tenents, as ever were the Papists, requiring of them whatsoever they afore payed to the Kirk, so that the Papistical tyrannic shall only be changed into the tyrannic of the lord and laird’: Cameron, First Hook, 156–7; ibid. 157; Caldcrwood, op. cit. ii. 282, 470.

85 Ibid. v. 276.

86 Ibid. 410.

87 Ibid. 437.

88 In spite of the windfall from ecclesiastical estates, noble finances were far from healthy by c. 1600, K. M. Brown, ‘Aristocratic finances and the origins of the Scottish revolution’, EHR civ (1989) 46–87; and idem, ‘Noble indebtedness from the Reformation to the revolution’, Historical Research (forthcoming). In the 1630s economic discontent helped forge an alliance between the aristocracy and religious radicals who turned against the king and the bishops, Makcy, W., The Church of the Covenant, 1637–51: revolution and social change in Scotland, Edinburgh 1979Google Scholar; idem, ‘Presbyterian and Canterburian in the Scottish revolution’, in MacDougall Church, Politics and Society, 151–66.

89 Knox, Works ii. 167, 562, 565, 566. In his History, 97. Lord Herries criticised Glencairn for his attack on Mary's chapel royal in Holyrood, on the grounds that it was a private action done without proper authorisation.

90 Calderwood, History v. 185. On Scottish Catholics in general sec Sanderson, M. H. B., ‘Catholic recusancy in Scotland in the sixteenth century’, Innes Review xxi (1970), 87–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On political Catholicism see Brown, K. M.‘The making of a politique: the Counter Reformation and the regional politics of John 8th Lord Maxwell’, SHR lxvi (1987), 152–75Google Scholar; idem, Bloodfeud, 144–82.

91 The Spottiswoode Miscellany, ed. Maidment, J. (Spottiswoode Society iii, 1844–5), i. 261Google Scholar, and see Wormald, ‘Princes’, 76–7.

92 CSP Scot vii. 426–7.

93 M. Lee, ‘King James's popish Chancellor’, in Cowan and Shaw, Renaissance and Reformation, 170–82; Brown, ‘The making of a politique’.

94 E.J. Cowan, ‘The darker vision of the Scottish Renaissance: the devil and Francis Stewart’, in Cowan and Shaw, op. cit. 125–40. See also Larner, C., Enemies of God. The witch-hunt in Scotland, London 1981.Google Scholar

95 For Mary's comments on Ruthven, Calderwood, History ii. 213; for the first earl, ‘The manner and form of the examination of William Earl of Gowrye, May 1584’, Bannalyne Miscellany i. 99–100; and his son, Cowan, ibid. 138.

96 Calderwood, History iv. 680; Hume, History, 432; Spottiswoode, History ii. 389; Registrum Honorum de Morton, ed. Thomson, T., 2 vols (Bannatyne Club lxxxxiv, 1853), i. 171.Google Scholar

97 Calderwood, op. cit. ii. 505.

98 Scots Peerage i. 533–6.

99 Hume, History, 364; Melville, Memoirs, 281; Calderwood, History iv. 47; Scots Peerage i. 396. Arran has been seen by some as the model for Macbeth, see Ferguson, J., The Man behind Macbeth and Other Studies, London 1969, 22–87.Google Scholar Arran's father was the ‘Godly’ Lord Ochiltree, and his brother-in-law had been John Knox. The question of atheism in Scotland at this time has never been directly discussed, but for a European perspective see Febvre, L., The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge. Mass.-London 1982.Google Scholar

100 Calderwood, History ii. 229–30. The first duke of Lennox also created something of a surprise by dying a Protestant in Paris, Spottiswoode, History ii. 298.

101 Scots Peerage i. 119.

102 ‘Extracts from the Register of the General Kirk of Edinburgh’, in Mailland Miscellany i/1. 126.

103 Knox, Works i. 290.

104 Historic, 94; Melville, Memoirs, 242; Spottiswoode, op. cit. ii. 166.

105 Ibid. ii. 179, 199.

106 CSP Scot xii. 18–19. Calderwood said that he died ‘in a very good estate, as appeared, for a life to come’: History v. 382; Spottiswoode, op. cit. ii. 463–4.

107 Hume, History, 431–2; Scottish Record Office Commissary Court 8/8/20/49. Many testaments make no reference at all to spiritual matters or adopt a formalised tone, as in the case of Chatelheraut who ‘comittis his spirit and soul to his god’:CC 8/8/4/191.

108 Select Biographies, ed. Tweedie, W. K., 2 vols (Wodrow Society ix, 1845–7), i. 383–409.Google Scholar The kind of deathbed scenes described above fall into the category identified and labelled as ‘the tame death’ by P. Aries, Western Attitudes to Death from the Middle Ages to the Present, Baltimore-London 1983, and idem, The Hour of Our Death, Harmondsworth 1983. The Scots also had a good deal in common with English Protestants, Gittings, C., Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modem England, London-Sydney 1984.Google Scholar

109 Melville, Diary, 83–4, 326; Calderwood. History iii, 559–60, 565–7, 570, 574–5; iv. 35–7, 41–2; Moysie, Memoirs, 50.