Of his
controversial
writings, three have special
## p.
## p.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v03
Not improbably, it was written at the instance
of the king, who, about the same time, was encouraging Buchanan
to satirise the Franciscans. Henry Charteris, the first publisher
of Lyndsay's Works, could attribute Lyndsay's escape from per-
secution only to the special intervention and mercy of heaven;
but it is to be remembered that Lyndsay did not, like Buchanan,
direct his attacks against any special religious order, that he
enjoyed the intimate friendship of the king and, it may be, of
Mary of Lorraine as well, and that he was not a preacher, nor
even a full-blown reformer. He was neither Calvinist nor
puritan, and was less interested in disputes about doctrines and
forms of church polity than in the social and political well-being
of the people.
Ane Pleasant Satyre is a morality play, but it is also some-
thing more. It is a blend of secular and sacred drama, and
embodies something of the French morality farce. It introduces
real, as well as allegorical, personages, and it lightens the action
of the play by comic devices borrowed from French models. In
parts, it manifests the special characteristics of modern comedy.
It inevitably does so by reason of the very specific character of
its satirical representation of contemporary manners. Though
>
## p. 124 (#146) ############################################
I 24
Sir David Lyndsay
hampered as a comedy by its morality conventions, it is a morality
play of a very advanced type: a morality play aided in its
dramatic action and relieved in its dramatic seriousness by a
strong infusion of comedy, and by the intermixture of interludes
of a strikingly realistic character. The strictly morality portions
are superior to the morality plays of Bale; and the interludes are
much more elaborate and finished specimens of comedy than the
interludes of Heywood. Lyndsay's knowledge of the ways of
the world and of the temper and characteristics of the crowd,
and the minute character of his zeal as a reformer, were impor-
tant elements contributing to his dramatic success. Neither in
this nor in other satires was he content with generalities. His
desire was to scourge the definite social evils of his time, and
he had therefore to represent them in living form, as manifested
in the speech, manner and bearing of individual persons
For this reason, the play is of unique interest as a mirror of the
Scotland of Lyndsay's time—when Catholicism was tottering to its
fall. It is an excessively long play, its representation occupying a
whole day, from nine in the morning until six in the evening; but
its length enables the playwright to present a pretty comprehensive
epitome of contemporary abuses and of contemporary manners and
morals. The flagrant frailties of the ecclesiastics are portrayed
with sufficient vividness in the speeches of representative types
and in the amusing exposition of their relations with allegorical
personages, good and bad; but it is in the tone of Lyndsay's wit, in
the character of the horseplay by which he seeks to tickle his
audience, in his method of pandering to their grosser tastes, in the
farcical proceedings of such persons as the soutar, the tailor and
their two wives, in the interviews between Pauper and Pardoner,
in the dealings of Pardoner with the soutar and the soutar's wife
and in the doings and speeches of Folly, that the peculiar social
atmosphere of the time is most graphically revealed.
The play is divided into two parts, and part I, which represents
the temptation of Rex Humanitas by Sensualitie, is divided into
two acts, with an interlude between them. Sensualitie is intro-
duced to the king by Wantonness, Placebo and Solace, in whose
company he then passes to a private apartment, after which Gude
Counsell makes his appearance. Gude Counsell declares his inten-
tion to ‘repois sometime in this place, but is immediately followed
by Flatterie and Falset, who, shortly after they have congratulated
each other on their happy meeting, are joined by their indispensable
companion Dissait; whereupon, the three resolve to introduce them-
## p. 125 (#147) ############################################
Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis 125
selves to the king under the guise respectively of Devotion, Sapience
and Discretion. Shortly afterwards, the king returns to the stage
and calls for Wantonness, who introduces him to the three vices;
and, after a conversation with him in their feigned characters, in
the course of which their proficiency in their several methods of
guile is admirably indicated, he gives them welcome as 'three men
of gude. Here the king, observing Gude Counsell standing
dejectedly at a distance, sends his new friends to bring him to
his presence; but, when they discover who he is, they hustle him
out of the place, threatening him with death should he dare to
return. They then inform the king that the person he saw was a
house-breaker whom they had ordered to be sent to the thieves'
hole. Gude Counsell having been expelled, the king is now entirely
in the hands of his evil companions, and sits down amongst the
ladies, who sing to him a song, led by Sensualitie. Here Veritie
makes her appearance carrying a New Testament, but is speedily
followed by the Spiritualitie—including the abbot and the parson
-who, at the instance of Flatterie, put Veritie in the stocks, after
she had offered up an impressive prayer, beginning:
Get up, thou sleepis all too long, O Lord !
And mak sam ressonibill reformatioun.
Veritie being disposed of, Chastitie makes her appearance,
whom, on her asking for ‘harberie, Diligence recommends to go
to a 'prioress of renown,' sitting amongst the rest of the Spiri-
tualitie. The prioress, however, asks her to keep her distance, the
Spiritualitie tell her to pass on, for they know her 'not, and even
Temporalitie informs her that, if his wives knew she were here, they
would 'mak all this town on steir. ' With the sorrowful departure
of Chastitie from the company, act I ends. It is admirably con
ceived and written, the terseness and point of the satire being
accentuated by the very skilful management of the dramatic
situations.
Act 1 is followed by an interlude, relating the adventures of
Chastitie after her expulsion from high society. On introducing
herself to a tailor and soutar, she is cordially welcomed by these
worthies; but, while they are entertaining her, their wives enter,
and, after a boisterous scene, during which the wives set on their
husbands in savage fashion both with tongue and hand, Chastitie
is driven away; whereupon, after further dinging' of their
'gudemen,' the wives resolve to have a feast in celebration of
their victory, the tailor's wife sitting down to make 'ane paist,'
6
## p. 126 (#148) ############################################
126
Sir David Lyndsay
and the soutar's wife kilting up her clothes above her waist, that
she may cross the river on her way to the town to fetch a quart
of wine.
Diligence (the master of the ceremonies), who had found
Chastitie wandering houseless, late at night, at the beginning of
act II introduces her to the king; but, Sensualitie objecting to her
presence, she is put in the stocks by the three disguised vices.
She is, however, comforted by Veritie with the news that Divyne
Correctioun is 'new landit, and might be expected very soon.
Hereupon, Correctioun's varlet (or messenger) enters, on hearing
whose message Flatterie resolves to take refuge with the
Spiritualitie or hide himself in some cloister. He therefore bids
adieu to his two friends, who, before leaving, resolve to steal the
king's box, but quarrel over the division of the spoil and Dissait
runs away with the box through the water, just as Divyne
Correctioun enters. At the instance of Correctioun, Gude Counsell
and Veritie are set free from the stocks, and, accompanied by
Veritie, Gude Counsell and Chastitie pass to the king. On the
advice of Correctioun, the king then consents to the expulsion of
Sensualitie, who, on seeking the protection of the Spiritualitie, is
warmly welcomed by them as their dayis darling. By further
'
'
advice of Correctioun, the king then receives into his society Gude
Counsell, Veritie and Chastitie; and, on their confessing their faults
and promising to have no further dealings with Sensualitie,
Correctioun also pardons Wantonness, Placebo and Solace. Then,
after a speech by Gude Counsell, Diligence, by order of the king,
warns all members of parliament, both the Spiritualitie and the
Temporalitie, to appear speedilyat court. He then intimates that the
first part of the play is ended, and that there will be a short interval
—which he recommends them to employ in refreshing themselves
and in other ways not now mentioned in ordinary company.
Between the first part and the second there is an interlude, while
the ‘king, bishops and principal players are out of their places. '
It introduces us to a pauper, who is really a small farmer reduced
to poverty by ecclesiastical oppression, and on his way to
St Andrews to seek redress. When Diligence endeavours to
drive him away as ane vilde begger carle,' he climbs up to the
king's chair and seeks to seat himself in it. With some difficulty
Diligence succeeds in making him vacate it, but, struck by his sad
and respectable demeanour, asks him where he comes from and what
is his errand. Pauper then recites to him in moving terms the
story of his wrongs at the hands of the ecclesiastics, who have
6
## p. 127 (#149) ############################################
6
Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis 127
brought him to utter poverty by their greedy extortions on the
death of his father, his mother and his wife, which had successively
occasioned him the loss of his mare and his three cows; while even
the clothes of the deceased persons have been seized as perquisites
by the vicar's clerk. After telling his pitiable story, Pauper, with
the consent of Diligence, lays him down to rest; and there enters
Pardoner, who, unchallenged by Diligence, proceeds to make a
speech in which he rails at the 'wicket New Testament,' which
has greatly injured his trade, and exposed the craft which he had
been taught by a friar called Hypocrisy; bans Martin Luther,
Black Bullinger and Melanchthon; and expresses the wish that
Paul had never been born, or his books never read except by
friars. Then, placing his wares on a board, he proceeds to dilate
on their several merits, the picturesque recital being, on Lyndsay's
part, a masterpiece of mocking irony, full of grotesque allusions
admirably adapted to provoke the amused mirth of the rude crowd.
The soutar, who, meanwhile, has entered and listened to the recital,
now resolves to take advantage of Pardoner's arrival to obtain
a dispensation for separation from his wife. While he is in con-
ference with the holy man for this purpose, his wife appears, just in
time to hear his very plain-spoken description of her character and
doings; but, although furiously angry with him for libelling her as
he has done, she, in answer to Pardoner's query, affirms that she is
content with all her heart to be separated from him; and,
thereupon, Pardoner, on condition that they perform a mutual
ceremony too coarse for description, sends them away uncoupled,
'with Belial's best blessing. ' Then, after an interview between
Pardoner and his boy-servant Willikin, during which we obtain the
information that village middens are the chief hunting grounds for
Pardoner's holy relics, Pauper awakes from sleep. On Pauper
handing to the holy man his solitary groat, Pardoner guarantees
him in return a thousand years of pardons; but, since Pauper
cannot see the pardons and has no evidence that he has obtained
anything, he comes to the conclusion that he is merely being
robbed; and the interlude ends with a grotesque encounter
between the two, during which Pauper pitches both board and
relics into the water.
Part II deals more specifically with the evils of the time than
part 1 The three estates, in response to the previous summons,
now appear before the king; but they are shown us walking back-
wards, led by their vices—Spiritualitie by Covetousness and
Sensualitie, Temporalitie (the Lords) by Publick Oppression and
## p. 128 (#150) ############################################
128
Sir David Lyndsay
Merchant (the representatives of the burghs) by Falset and Dissait.
On Diligence, however, summoning all who are oppressed to come
and make their complaint to the king, John the Commoun Weill
makes his appearance, and, after a piquant conversation with the
king, denounces the vices of the three estates in no measured
terms, and requires that such scandalous persons should be put in
the stocks, which, at the instance of Correctioun, is immediately
done, Spiritualitie bidding Covetousness and Sensualitie a farewell,
the sadness of which is mitigated by the hope of soon meeting
them again. Then, at the instance of John the Commoun Weill,
who delivers an impressive address on the abuses of the adminis-
tration, the Temporal Estates repent of their conduct, promise
amendment and embrace John the CommounWeill. The Spiritualitie,
however, not only remain impenitent, but impudently seek to repre-
sent their doings as in the highest degree exemplary; the abbot,
the parson and the lady prioress, each in characteristic fashion,
seeking to show that their violation of their vows, so far from
being dishonourable, is rather to their credit than not, and that
their sins of omission are really condoned by the character of what
are usually deemed their sins of commission. This leads to a long
debate, during which Pauper, and also the soutar, the tailor,
a scribe and Common Thift, all add liveliness and point to the dis-
cussion. Then Common Thift—who had no other resource but to
steal—is induced by Oppressioun to go into the stocks in Oppres-
sioun's stead, on condition that Oppressioun will come again soon
and relieve him; but Oppressioun slinks away from the scene,
leaving Common Thift unsuccoured. Doctor, then, at the instance
of Correctioun, mounts the pulpit, and delivers a sermon amid
ill-mannered interruptions from the abbot and the parson. During
its delivery, Diligence spies a friar whispering with the abbot, and,
suspecting that he intends to 'set the town on steir' against the
preacher, has him apprehended; and, on his being brought in by
the sergeant and stripped of his habit, he is seen to be no other
than Flatterie. The lady prioress is then spoiled of her habit, and,
on being discovered to have been wearing under it a kirtle of silk,
gives her malison to her parents for compelling her to be a nun,
and not permitting her to marry. Flatterie is then put in the
stocks, and the three prelates are stripped of their habits, which
are put upon three sapient, cunning clerks. The prelates seek to
find comfort from Covetousness and Sensualitie; but these former
friends now renounce them, and they depart to earn an honest
living in secular occupations. Thereafter, John the Commoun
-
## p. 129 (#151) ############################################
Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis 129
Weill, clothed in gorgeous apparel, takes his place in the parlia-
ment, and, after acts have been passed for the reform of clamant
abuses, the malefactors in the stocks are led to the gallows.
Flatterie saves himself by undertaking the office of executioner;
and with their characteristic last speeches and Flatterie's cynical
self-congratulation, the drama proper is brought to a close.
This latter portion, which is a good deal longer and more com-
plicated in its action than part I, is, at the same time, more
diversely and elaborately clever. It is enlivened by a great
variety of picturesque incidents, and the satire is so pointed and
so topical, and the various dénouements are led up to with such
admirable wit, that the audience must have been kept throughout
in a high state of amused excitement, mingled with righteous
expectation, and must, at the close, have been not less seriously
impressed with the lessons of the play, than enthusiastic over
its dramatic merits.
The play proper is followed, for the diversion of the multitude,
by a farcical interlude, after the manner of the French mono-
logues, a comic sermon being delivered by a buffoon dressed up
as Follie, in which shrewd advice is mingled with an extremely
coarse display of low wit.
If the glamour of poetry be absent from The Pleasant Satyre,
its sententiousness and wit are occasionally varied by strains of
lofty eloquence; and, if its moralising seems to us a little tedious
and commonplace, it would have a different aspect to Lyndsay's
contemporaries. Moreover, the more serious portions of the play
are relieved by an unfailing flow of witty satire, which is all
the more irresistible in that the special idiosyncrasy of each
wicked or foolish character is revealed with admirable consistency,
and that each is unconsciously made the exponent of his own
wickedness or folly. Viewed as literature, the merit of the play
is of a high order: the style is always clear, terse and pointed,
even when neither witty nor eloquent. Though rather rough and
careless in his rhythm, Lyndsay shows an easy command of rime
as well as some skill in varying his metres to suit his subject.
The dialogues are, for the most part, in an eight-lined stave in the
rime couée used in early English plays, or in the octosyllabic couplet;
but, for various recitals in character, he has recourse to a rimed
alliterative stave used in several old romances, to the heroic
couplet, to the French octave and the kyrielle; and to various
forms of the six-lined stave in rime couée, including that which
was a favourite of Burns.
E. L. III.
9
OH. VI.
## p. 130 (#152) ############################################
130
Sir David Lyndsay
The satirical Tragedie of the Cardinal, written shortly after the
death of cardinal Beaton, and printed, probably, in 1547, a kind of
parody of the lives in Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Ilustrium,
offers a detailed account of the cardinal's errors in conduct and
policy, which his ghostly personality is supposed to relate as a
warning to prelates and princes; but the dejection of the dis-
embodied individuality seems to affect the poem, which is one of
the least sprightly of Lyndsay's poetic efforts. Even so, however, it
compares favourably with the long Dialog betuix Experience and
Ane Courteour, which seems to have been suggested by Lyndsay's
epitome. Opening with a discussion of the moral reasons for
human suffering and misery, it includes an argument for the
circulation of the Bible in the vernacular, an account of the
creation of Adam and Eve, a prelection on man's first sin, an
explanation and description of the Flood, an account of the rise
and fall of the four great monarchies—which, according to the
author, were the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian and the Roman
-a reference to the first spiritual or papal monarchy with a
description of the court of Rome and a dissertation on death,
Anti-Christ and the general Judgment.
Only two other of Lyndsay's pieces remain to be mentioned,
and they are of an entirely non-didactic nature: The Deplora-
tioun of the Death of Queen Magdalene and The Historie of the
Squyer Meldrum. The former, in rime royal, is modelled on the
aureate method adopted by Dunbar in his more ceremonial pieces,
but lacks the imposing musical melody of Dunbar's verse, and jolts
along in a rather rough and uneven fashion. In couplets, Lyndsay
was more at his ease, and in this medium he has related the varied
and surprising adventures of a Fife neighbour, Squire William
Meldrum, umwhile laird of Cleish and Binns, with unfailing spirit
and with a point and graphic particularity that, to the modern
reader, is sometimes a little disconcerting. Modelled after the
Squire's Tale of Chaucer, Lyndsay's narrative, though in substance
reļating the actual experiences and achievements of Meldrum,
reproduces them with a gloss which makes the poem assume the
form of a kind of burlesque of the old romances. Apart from its
special merits, it is of interest as revealing Lyndsay's enjoyment
of mere merriment devoid of satire.
Of James V, Lyndsay's royal patron, no verses that can be
authenticated survive; for he can as little be credited with the
authorship of Peblis and Christis Kirk, as of The Gaberlunzie Man
## p. 131 (#153) ############################################
Minor Poets
131
and The Jolly Beggars. For an account of Lyndsay's other poetic
contemporaries and a summary of their individual merits we are
indebted to Lyndsay's prologue to The Complaynt of the Papyngo.
Of the poetry of Sir James Inglis, whom he commends as
without a superior 'in ballatis, farces and in plesant playis,' and
who is credited by some with the authorship of The Complaynt
of Scotland, no examples remain that are definitely known to
be his. John Bellenden, the translator of Boethius and Livy,
prefixed to his translations moral ‘prohemiums' ornamented
with classical allusions, and is also the author of 'a godly and
lernit work callit The Banner of Pietie,' contained in the Banna-
tyne MS; but these specimens of his art far from justify Lyndsay's
eulogy of him as ‘ane plant of poetis. ' To Kyd, the Bannatyne MS
ascribes The Richt Fontane of hailfull Sapience, which may well
enough have been the production of one who Lyndsay affirms was
'in cunnyng and practick rycht prudent,' for it is admirable rather
as advice than as poetry. Stewarte, who, while Lyndsay wrote, was
daily compiling 'full ornate werkis,' and who, in Rolland's Seven
Sages, is referred to as a court poet, is represented in the Banna-
tyne MS by several pieces very much in the style of Dunbar,
including a ribald Flyting betwix the Sowtar and the Tailyour,
and an aureate love poem—in the French octave with refrain-
For to declare the hie Magnificence of Ladies—which he does with
more ardour than inspiration. Stewarte of Lorne, also reterred to
by Lyndsay, may possibly be the W. Stewarte whose name is
attached in the Bannatyne MS to a short allegorical piece entitled
This Hinder Nycht neir by the Hour of Nine. John Rolland, a
Dalkeith notary who, about 1560, wrote The Sevin Sages, was also
the author of a long and dull allegorical piece, entitled The Court
of Venus. Among poetry of later date than 1530, in the Banna-
tyne MS, is Gife Langour makis men licht, attributed to lord
Darnley, but, we must suppose, written by some unknown poet as
an imaginary representation of Darnley's sentiments ; a humorous
love-song ( Gallandis AU I cry and call, signed ‘Balnaves'; two
love-songs, signed 'Fethy,' and, probably, the production of Sir
John Futhy, a priest and organist, who is also credited, by the MS
of Thomas Wode in Dublin university, with the authorship of a
sacred song O God abufe set to music by himself, but of which
no copy is known to survive; a song Be Merry Brethren, signed
'Fleming,' and consisting of a series of advices to husbands as to
how to deal with unruly wives; a short humorous piece, Brother
Beware, I red you now, attributed to Sir John Moffat, to whom
>
9_2
## p. 132 (#154) ############################################
132
Later Scottish Poetry
another than Bannatyne attributes that humorous rural tale The
Wyf of Auchtirmuchty; two love poems The Lanterne of Lufe
and Absent, attributed to Steill, who is also the author of a
romance in the Maitland MS, entitled The Ring of the Roy
Robert. In quite a different vein is the lament of one Clapperton,
in the Maitland MS, In Bowdin on blak Monanday. In the
Bannatyne MS are three grossly witty ballads on notorious
courtesans of the time, written by Robert Sempill, the author of
powerfully satirical reformation broadsides, including The Legend
and Discourse of the life of the Tulchene Bischope of St An-
drews. Most of the verses of these and other decidedly more
minor poets in the Bannatyne and Maitland MSS manifest con-
siderable technical skill; but both in subject and manner they
are largely imitative, and, though their wit is occasionally clever,
they generally lack the distinctive qualities of poetry. Most of
the anonymous verse in the Bannatyne and Maitland MSS, belongs,
evidently, to an earlier period than that of Lyndsay and has been
discussed in an earlier chapter of the present work; indeed,
there is definite proof of early date in regard to many pieces, in-
cluding some of the finest songs; but there are a few, such as My
Hart is quhyt, which are probably of the time of Alexander Scott,
if not even by Scott himself.
A satirical piece of about Lyndsay's time, and preserved by
Knox in his Historie of the reformatioun, is the earl of Glencairn's
Epistle direct from the Holy hermit of Allarit to his Brethren the
Gray Freiris; and a later versifier, who manifests something
of Lyndsay's spirit and method, though little of his vigour or
skill, is William Lauder, afterwards minister of Forgandenny,
who wrote in octosyllabic couplets Ane Compendious and breve
Tractate concernyng the office and dewtie of Kyngis, Spirituall
Pastoris, and Temporall Jugis (1556) and is the author of several
minor poems of somewhat similar intent.
A social satirist of a much milder type than Lyndsay was
Sir Richard Maitland, who was not very much Lyndsay's senior
in years, though most of his verse was written after Lyndsay's
death. A descendant of the Richard de Matelant who defended
the family keep of Thirlestane against Edward I, and whose
deeds were celebrated in ancient song and story, Maitland
belonged to that class of Scottish gentry from which govern-
ment and court officials were chiefly drawn, and held the office
of judge from the time of James V until 1584. Having, about
his sixtieth year, lost his sight, he, partly to divert his mind from
## p. 133 (#155) ############################################
Sir Richard Maitland
133
the troubles of the time, partly to occupy the now duller hours
of his leisure, devoted them, with the aid of his daughter, to
literature; and, besides compiling A Chronicle and Historie of
the House and Surname of Seatone, and composing a good many
poetical pieces, he set himself to gather the collection of Scottish
MS poetry, which, copied out by his daughter, is now preserved
in the Pepysian library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In his
poetry, as well as otherwise, he is a survival of the ante-reformation
period. As regards both the form and spirit of his verse, he is
a disciple of Dunbar, though his satire lacks Dunbar's boisterous
humour and keenness of wit, and his reflective pieces Dunbar's
emotional pungency. He has nothing in common with Lyndsay:
though quite alive to the evils of the old régime, he did not, while
it existed, make them the object of his satire ; nor, when the new
régime was established, was he by any means persuaded of that
régime's perfection. In Quhair is the Blytheness that has been he
laments the decay of the old merry customs, and in his Miseries of
the Tyme he bewails the lack of any real amendment either in
church or state. Like his famous son, William the secretary, he was
more an enlightened patriot and a shrewd man of the world than
either an ecclesiastical or political partisan. The evils of internal
dissension and strife are set forth by him in the poems Of the Assem-
blie of the Congregation, 1559, and on the New Yeir, 1560; and, at
a later period, he advocated a reconciliation of the two parties in
a
Againis the Division of the Lordis, On Union among the Lordis,
Againis Discord among the Lordis and Lament for the Disorders
of the Cuntrie. He brought to the consideration of social, political
and religious questions much of the impartiality and practical
worldly wisdom of the judge ; and his satire is severest when he
deals with social disorders or violations of the law, as in The Satire
of the Aige and Againis the Theivis of Liddisdaill, the latter of
which has something of the denunciatory rush of Dunbar's Donald
Owre, on which it is modelled. In The Satire of the Toun Ladeis,
an amusing recital of the extravagant caprices of contemporary
female fashions, his tone is mainly that of half cynical, half good-
humoured mockery, while his verses on the Folye of Ane auld
man maryand ane Young Woman, are shrewdly sententious
and mildly witty in the suggestive fashion characteristic of
the time. The Ballat of the Greatness of the World, prompted,
it may be, like Lyndsay's Dialog, by a perusal of the translation
of the Scriptures, and written in the stave of The Cherrie and the
Slae, indicates his acceptance of the conventional beliefs of his
## p. 134 (#156) ############################################
134
Later Scottish Poetry
a
time; but the poem is a very uninspired performance; and much
more of his real self appears in the half humorous, half melancholy
musings of such pieces as Na Kyndes without Siller, Gude Coun-
seillis, Advyce to lesum Merynes and Solace of Aige. Maitland
was hardly a poet, nor is he of much account as a satirist ; but
his verse is of considerable interest as a record of the ingenuous
sentiments of a highly accomplished and upright man, who, at this
troubled and critical period of Scottish history, kept, in a manner,
aloof from both parties.
Alexander Scott, almost the only lyrist, except such as are
anonymous, of importance amongst the old Scottish poets, stands
still more aloof in spirit than Maitland from the emotional and
fervent zeal of the reformers. His poetry is entirely secular
in theme and manner, with the exception of a translation of
two psalms, the first and the fiftieth, which, though cleverly rimed,
are both of them rather frigid and mechanical. Seeing Mont-
gomerie refers to him, in 1584, as 'old Scott,' he was probably
born not later than towards the close of the first quarter of
the sixteenth century. If, again, his supposed Lament of the
Master of Erskine be properly named, he most likely began to
write not later than 1547, for the master, who is reported to have
been the lover of the queen dowager, was slain at Pinkie in that
year, and the poem is credited with embodying his imaginary
farewell to her. Of May must, also, have been written before the
act of parliament passed in 1555 against the old May celebrations;
and, although the only other poem of his that can be dated is his
New Yeir Gift to Queen Mary, 1562, none of his verses that has
been preserved is of later date than 1568.
Of the thirty-six pieces of which Scott is known to be the
author, thirty are of an amatory character, and the majority of
them seem to have been greatly influenced in style and spirit by
the love lyrics in Tottels Miscellany, 1557, whether Scott had
an acquaintance with such pieces before they were published or
not. To Scott's verse there thus attaches a certain special interest,
as suggesting the possibility of a new school of Scottish poetry,
which, while retaining certain northern characteristics, would
gradually become more and more assimilated to the English
school; but this possibility had already been made futile by the
triumph of a puritanic reformation. Scott was a creation of the
ante-reformation period; and, although his themes and his method
of treatment are partly suggested by the lyrical school of England,
he may still be regarded as, primarily, the pupil of Dunbar. The
## p. 135 (#157) ############################################
Alexander Scott
135
influence of the English school is modified by characteristics that
are distinctly Scottish. While the Miscellany seems to have
suggested to him the appropriateness of short staves for certain
forms of the love lyric, he was not content to confine himself to
the staves that were there represented ; as a metrist he belongs
properly to the school of the old Scottish 'makaris. ' Besides
utilising several of Dunbar's staves he had recourse to a variety of
earlier staves in rime couée ; and in the use of these medieval forms
he shows a consummate mastery. His distinct poetic gift is shown
in the facility, the grace and the musical melody of his verse, and his
power of mirroring sentiment and emotion in sound and rhythm;
and there are also qualities in the tone and spirit of his verse that
individualise it and distinguish it from the lyrical school of England.
It is not so much imitative, as representative of his own charac-
teristic personality. He is terser, more pungent, more aphoristic
than the English lyrists. In most of his lyrics, the emotional note
vibrates more strongly-in the utterance of joy, as in Up Helsum
Hairt; in the expression of sorrowful resignation, as in The Lament
of the Master of Erskine, and Oppressit Hairt Indure; or in the
record of his amatory experiences, as in Lo Quhat it is to Lufe;
and it may further be added that when, as in the Ballad maid
to the Derisioun and Scorne of Wantoun Wemen, he is inde-
corous, he evinces a grossness that his English contemporaries
cannot rival.
Apart from his lyrics and his translation of
two psalms, the only other pieces of Scott are The New Yeir
Gift, and The Justing and Debait. In the former, after com-
plimenting the queen in the aureate fashion of Dunbar, he
devotes himself to a recital of the social evils of the time, more
after the manner of Maitland than of Lyndsay; and he concludes
with an envoy in which he gives an elaborate display of his
accomplishments in alliteration and internal rime. The Justing
and Debait, written in the Christis Kirk stave, is a mock
tournament piece after the fashion of Dunbar's Turnament and
Lyndsay's Justing, but less an uproarious burlesque than a lightly
witty narrative.
Alexander Montgomerie, the last of the Scottish 'makaris,'
probably held some office at the court of James VI, and, most
likely, was the king's chief instructor in the art of verse. He
has a good deal in common with Scott, of whom he may be
reckoned a kind of disciple. His temperament was, however, less
poetical; he lacked Scott's geniality as well as artistic grace;
he was more varied and voluminous; he was a still greater, if
## p. 136 (#158) ############################################
136
Later Scottish Poetry
a less successful, experimenter in curious metres, and, as might
be supposed from his later date, he was, in some respects, still
more influenced by the English school. Still, like Scott, as a
metrist, he belongs to the Scottish school, the metres which he
invents being merely modified reconstructions and combinations
of the old ones, while what staves, as the ballade,' he borrows
from the English lyric school, have a certain similarity to the old
staves, the only difference in the 'ballade' stave being the modern
lilt of the double refrain. Even in the sonnet, of which he left
no fewer than seventy examples, he has a certain non-English
individuality; for while, in some instances, he adopted the sonnet
forms of Tottels Miscellany, he also translated several of
Ronsard's sonnets in the Ronsard form, and wrote a Ronsard
variation. Further, his connection with the old Scottish school
is seen in his use of the old rimed alliterative stave of the
romances in Ane Answer to ane Helandmanis Invective and in
the Flyting between him and Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth.
The most popular of Montgomerie's pieces was, apparently,
The Cherrie and the Slae ; but its popularity had only an indirect
connection with its poetic merits. These are not remarkable and
are not superior to those of The Bankis of Helicon, which is in
the same measure. But, in The Cherrie and the Slae, Montgomerie
does not, as in The Bankis of Helicon, have recourse to aureate
terms or classical imagery. Though somewhat dull and archaic
as an allegory, the piece as regards its language is perfectly simple
and unaffected; in the descriptions of nature there are no attempts
at meretricious ornaments; they represent the fresh and quite
unsophisticated pleasure and admiration of the average person;
while the general drift of the poem is obscure, it is pervaded by
the maxims of that homely and commonplace philosophy, of the
repetition of which the average uneducated person never tires; and,
finally, the quatorzain in which the piece is written, was, with the
peculiar jingle of its wheels, well adapted to catch the popular ear,
although the full capabilities of the stave were only revealed by
Burns in the recitativos of The Jolly Beggars. As a very varied
metrist in what James VI termed 'cuttit and broken verse,'
Montgomerie showed both remarkable ingenuity and a good
musical ear; but he was not a poetic melodist-partly from his
despondent views of life and deficiency in animal spirits, his verses
are, for the most part, lacking in poetic flow. His reflective pieces
are too lowspirited to be effective; his amatory verse is not
animated by much lyrical fervour; and his religious pieces and
6
## p. 137 (#159) ############################################
The last of the “Makaris'
137
versions of psalms, sometimes written to special tunes, while
characterised by apt phrasing and considerable metrical felicity,
do not manifest much fervour or depth of conviction. Yet The
Night is near Gone has the true accent of poetry, and, in several
other pieces, he has poetic moments.
With Montgomerie, the school of the old ‘makaris' properly
ends.
While James VI, who, in 1585, published Essayes of a
Prentise, and, in 1591, Poeticall Exercises, remained in Scotland,
poetry was practised by a few poets under his immediate patronage.
William Fowler translated The Triumphs of Petrarch, and Stewart
of Baldines presented the king with Ane Abbregement of Roland
Furious translated out of Aroist; but both works are preserved
only in manuscript, the one in the Edinburgh university library
and the other in the Advocates' library. In 1590, John Burel wrote a
Descriptioun of the queen’s entry into Edinburgh, and an allegorical
piece The Passage of the Pilgrim, but neither has much merit.
Poetry, except of a religious kind, now came under taboo, and the
religious verse was of a very mediocre character. Alexander
Arbuthnot, principal of Aberdeen university, amused his leisure
hours by cultivating the secular muse, but, as he relates, in secret,
and with fear and trembling, lest ‘with rascal rymours I sall raknit
be. ' On the other hand, Alexander Hume, minister of Logie
and younger brother of the Hume of Montgomerie's Flyting,
sought to substitute 'for prophane sonnets and vain ballads of
love' a series of Hymns and Sacred Songs, in which are dis-
cernible an assimilation in form of Scottish to English verse, and,
equally so, the fatal decay in Scotland of poetic inspiration. In
the succeeding century, the writing of verse, mostly in the English
language and form, was practised by certain of the Scottish
gentry; but, as regards the bulk of the people, secular poetry
remained for nearly two centuries under an ecclesiastical ban.
## p. 138 (#160) ############################################
CHAPTER VII
REFORMATION AND RENASCENCE IN SCOTLAND
In the year 1528, three events occurred in Scotland, which, as
the near future was to prove, were fraught with pregnant conse-
quences alike for the state and for the national religion and
national literature. In that year, James V, after a long tutelage,
became master of his kingdom; Patrick Hamilton, the "proto-
martyr” of the Scottish reformation, was burnt; and Sir David
Lyndsay published his first work, The Dreme. Taken together,
these three events point to the fact that Scotland was entering on
a new phase of her national life, and at the same time indicate the
character of the coming revolution. From the transformation
thus to be wrought in the national aims and ideals the chief
Scottish literature of the period received its distinctive stamp,
and we have but to recall its representative productions—those of
the anonymous authors of The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, of John
Knox and of George Buchanan-to realise the gulf that separates
it from the period immediately preceding.
From James I to Gavin Douglas, Scottish literature had been
mainly imitative, borrowing its spirit, its models and its themes
from Chaucer and other sources. The characteristic aim of this
literature bad, on the whole, been pleasure and amusement; and,
if it touched on evils in the state, in the church or in society, it
had no direct and conscious purpose of assailing the institutions
under which the nation had lived since the beginning of the
Middle Ages. Totally different were the character and aim of the
representative literature of the period which may be dated from
the publication of Lyndsay's Dreme in 1528 to the union of the
crowns in 1603. The literature of this period was in the closest
touch with the national life, and was the direct expression of the
convictions and passions of that section of the nation which was
eventually to control its destinies and to inform the national spirit.
Not pleasure or amusement but strenuous purpose directed to
practical results was the motive and note of this later period; its
## p. 139 (#161) ############################################
The Reformation
in Scotland
139
aim was to reach the heart of the people, and the forms which
it assumed were exclusively determined by the consideration of
this end
Between the years 1520 and 1530, there were already indications
that a crisis was approaching in the national history which would
involve a fundamental change in traditional modes of thought
on all the great questions concerning human life. The problem
which the nation had to face was whether it would abide by its
ancient religion or adopt the teaching of Luther, the writings of
whose followers were finding their way into the country at every
convenient port. But this question involved another of almost
equally far-reaching importance--was France or England to be
Scotland's future ally? Should the old alliance with France be
maintained, the country must hold fast to existing institutions ;
there would be no change of religion and no essential change in
hereditary habits of thought and sentiment. Throughout the
period now opening, these were the great issues that preoccupied
the nation, and it was from the conflict between them that the most
important literary productions of the age received their impulse,
their tone and their characteristic forms.
The literature produced under these conditions was essentially
a reformation literature, and its relation to the movement of
the reformation is its predominating characteristic. Neverthe-
less, though Scotland received her most powerful impulse from the
reformation, the renascence did not leave her wholly untouched,
though conditions peculiar to herself prevented her from deriving
the full benefit of that movement. Her scanty population and
her limited resources were in themselves impediments to the
expansion of the spirit which was the main result of the revival
of learning. The total population of Scotland in the sixteenth
century cannot have been much over 500,000, of whom only
about half used a Teutonic form of speech. Out of such a total
there could be but a small proportion who, by natural aptitude
and by fortunate circumstances, were in a position to profit by the
new current that was quickening the other nations of western
Europe. The poverty of the country, due to the nature of the
soil rather than to any lack of strenuousness on the part of its
people, equally hindered the development of a rich and various
national life. Scotland now possessed three universities ; but to
equip these in accordance with the new ideals of the time was
beyond her resources, and the same difficulty stood in the way of
maintaining great schools such as the renascence had originated
## p. 140 (#162) ############################################
140 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
in other countries. Finally, the renascence was checked in
Scotland, more than in any other country, by the special condi-
tions under which the reformation was here accomplished. From
the beginning to the end of the struggle, the Scottish reformers
had to contend against the consistent opposition of the crown,
and it was only as the result of civil war that the victory of their
cause was at length assured. Thus, at the period when the
renascence was in full tide, Scotland was spending her energies in
a contest which absorbed the best minds of the country; and a
variety of causes debarred her from an adequate participation
in that humanism which, in other countries, was widening the scope
of thought and action, and enriching literature with new forms and
new ideas. Nevertheless, though the renascence failed in any
marked degree to affect the general national life, it found, both
in literature and in action, distinguished representatives who had
fully imbibed its spirit.
It is from the preaching of Patrick Hamilton in 1527,
followed by his execution in 1528, that Knox dates the beginning
of the reformation in Scotland; and it is a production of
Hamilton, Patrikes Places, that he adduces as the first specimen
of its literature. “Literature,' however, this document can hardly
be called, as it is merely a brief and bald statement of the
Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, originally written
in Latin, and translated into Scoto-English by John Frith.
Associated with Hamilton in the beginnings of the Scottish
reformation is a more voluminous writer, Alexander Alane (for
this and not Aless was his real name, as appears from the registers
of the university of St Andrews), but better known by his Latin
designation, Alesius. Born in Edinburgh in 1500, Alesius was
trained for the church in the university of St Andrews. In an
attempt to convince Hamilton of the error of his ways, he was
shaken in his own faith, and suspicions soon arose regarding his
own orthodoxy. A Latin oration delivered against the vices of
the clergy left no room for doubt regarding his religious sym-
pathies, and he was thrown into prison, whence, with the aid of
friends, he escaped to the continent (1532). Alesius never re-
turned to Scotland, but, both in England and Germany, he played
an important part in forwarding the cause of the reformation.
He is the author of at least twenty-eight works, all written
in Latin, partly consisting of commentaries on Scripture, but
mainly of tracts and treatises on the theological controversies
of the time.
Of his controversial writings, three have special
## p. 141 (#163) ############################################
Plnus.
The Gude and Godlie Ballatis 141
reference to religious opinion in Scotland - Epistola contra Decre-
tum quoddam Episcoporum in Scotia, quod prohibet legere Novi
Testamenti Libros lingua vernacula (1533); Responsio ad Cochlaei
Calumnias (1533); and Cohortatio ad Concordiam (1544). The
question discussed in all these productions is the liberty of reading
the Scriptures in the original-a liberty which was first granted by
the Scottish parliament in 1543, and to which Alesius may have
materially contributed. To Alesius, also, we owe the earliest
known description of his native city of Edinburgh, which he
contributed to the Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster (1550).
More interesting for the literary history of the period is Knox's
mention of Kyllour's play, The History of Christ's Passion, to
which reference has already been made? Of Kyllour and his play
we know nothing beyond the casual reference of Knox. It is
matter for greater regret that two plays, mentioned by the church
historian, Calderwood, have not come down to us. The subjects of
the two plays point to the preoccupations of the age—the one being
a tragedy on John the Baptist, a favourite handle for satirical
attacks on the evils of church and state, and the other a comedy on
Dionysius the Tyrant. Scanty as these references are, they lead to
the conclusion that dramatic representations furnished the means
by wbich the champions of the new religion first sought to communi-
cate their teaching to the people. But scenic displays were not the
most effectual vehicles for spreading their tenets throughout the
nation; only a comparatively small public could be reached by them,
and the state had it always in its power to prohibit them, when they
overstepped the limits prescribed by the law. Another form of
literature, therefore, was required, at once less overt and of wider
appeal, if the new teaching was to reach the masses of the people;
and such a vehicle was now to be found.
It was about the year 1546 that there appeared a little volume
which, after the Bible itself, did more for the spread of reforma-
tion doctrines than any other book published in Scotland. As no
copy of this edition has been preserved, we can only conjecture
its contents from the first edition of which we possess a specimen-
that of 1567, apparently an enlarged edition of the original. The
book generally known in Scotland as The Gude and Godlie
Ballatis is, next to Knox's Historie of the reformatioun, the most
memorable literary monument of the period in vernacular Scots.
The chief share in the production of this volume, also known as
The Dundee Book, may, almost with certainty, be assigned to three
brothers, James, John and Robert Wedderburn, sons of a rich
· Ste anie, p. 122.
## p. 142 (#164) ############################################
142 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
1
Dundee merchant, all of whom had studied at the university of
St Andrews, and were for a time exiled for their attachment to the
reformed doctrines. Besides a metrical translation of the Psalms,
the book contained a number of Spirituall Sangis and Plesand
Ballatis, the object of which was to convey instruction in points
of faith, to stimulate devotion and to stigmatise the iniquities and
errors of the Roman church. Of both songs and ballads, fully one
half are more or less close translations from the popular German
productions which had their origin in the Lutheran movement.
But the most remarkable pieces in the book are those which adapt
current secular songs and ballads to spiritual uses, appropriating
the airs, measures, initial lines or choruses of the originals. This
consecration of profane effusions was not unknown in the medieval
church, and for the immediate object in view a more effective
literary form could not have been devised. At a time when books
were dear and were, in general, little read, these Godly Ballads,
set to popular tunes, served at once the purpose of a pamphlet
and a sermon, conveying instruction, while, at the same time,
they roused to battle. What amazes the reader of the present
day in these compositions is the grotesque blending of religion
with all the coarseness and scurrility of the age. Yet this
incongruity is only a proof of the intense conviction of their
authors: in the message they had to proclaim they believed
there was an effectual safeguard against all evil consequences,
and that in the contrast between the flesh and the spirit
the truth would only be made more manifest. Moreover,
there is an accent and a strain in the Ballads which is not to be
found in Lyndsay even in his highest mood. Even when he is
most in earnest, Lyndsay never passes beyond the zeal of the
social reformer. In the Ballads, on the other hand, there is often
present a yearning pathos as of soul speaking to soul, which
transmutes and purifies their coarsest elements, and transfuses
the whole with a spiritual rapture. And the influence that the
Ballads exercised-mainly on the inhabitants of the towns,
which almost universally declared for the reformation-proves
that the writers had not misjudged their readers. For fully half
a century, though unsanctioned by ecclesiastical authority, the
Ballads held their place as the spiritual songs of the reformation
church.
To the year 1548 belongs the first production of John Knox
who was to be at once the chief leader of the Scottish
reformation and its chief literary exponent. The work is
entitled An Epistle to the Congregation of the Castle of St
## p. 143 (#165) ############################################
John Knox. Epistle on Justification 143
Andrews: with a Brief Summary of Balnaves on Justification
by Faith, and, as its author informs us, was written in Rouen,
while he was 'lying in irons and sore troubled by corporall in-
firmitie, in a galley named Nostre Dame. ' Like all the other
works of Knox, it was prompted by an immediate occasion and
was directed to an immediate practical purpose. So closely linked,
indeed, are the six volumes of his writings to his public career,
that they are virtually its running commentary. From first to last
his one concern was to secure the triumph of reformation doctrine,
as he conceived it, and it would be difficult to find a sentence in
his writings which does not bear more or less directly on this
object. To all secular interests, except so far as they touched
religion, he displays the indifference of an apostle; though, like the
reformers of every type, he had a profound conviction, as his
action was notably to prove, that education was the true band-
maid of piety. His eulogy on his countryman, the humanist
George Buchanan, shows that a pictas literata was no less his
ideal than it was that of Melanchthon. "That notable man
Mr George Buchanan,' he writes, 'remains to this day, the year
of
God, 1566 years, to the glory of God, to the great honour of the
nation and to the comfort of them that delight in letters and
virtue. ' A religion based on the Bible, as he understood it, and a
national system of education which should provide for every grade
of study and utilise every special gift for the general well-being-
such were the aims of Knox's public action and the burden of his
testimony in literature,
With one great exception, no productions of Knox possess
more than a historical interest as the expression of his own mind
and temper and of the type of religion of which he was the un-
flinching exponent. Mainly controversial in character, neither by
their literary quality nor by their substance were they found of
permanent value even by those to whom they made special appeal.
The long list of his writings, which had begun with The Epistle on
Justification, was continued in England, where, for five years, we
find him acting as an officially commissioned preacher of the
reformation as it was sanctioned by the government of Edward VI.
The titles of the pieces which he threw off during this period
sufficiently indicate their nature and scope: A Vindication of
the Doctrine that the Sacrifice of the Mass is Idolatry (1550),
A Summary according to the Holy Scriptures of the Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper (1550), A Declaration of the True Nature
and Object of Prayer (1553) and The Exposition upon the Sixth
a
## p. 144 (#166) ############################################
144 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
Psalm of David (1554). The accession of Mary Tudor in July,
1553, made England an impossible place for protestants like
Knox, and his next five years, with the exception of a brief visit
to Scotland, were spent on the continent, mainly in Geneva, where
Calvin had already established his supremacy.
Knox's exile on the continent gave occasion to another series
of productions, all prompted by some pressing question of the
moment. The protestants in England had to be comforted and
encouraged during their trying experiences under the government
of Mary Tudor, and this end he sought to accomplish in his Two
comfortable Epistles to his afflicted Brethren in England (1554)
and in his Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God's Truth
in England (1554)—the latter of which, however, by its ill-timed
attack on the existing authorities in England, did not improve the
position of those for whose good it was intended. In 1554, Knox
was appointed to the charge of a congregation of English exiles
in Frankfort-on-the-Main, but, within a year, there arose such
a storm of controversy on points of doctrine and ceremonies
that he was fain to demit his charge and retire to Geneva. In
his Narrative of the Proceedings and Troubles of the English
Congregation at Frankfurt on the Maine, 1554–5, Knox gave
his story of the controversy, the historical interest of which is
that out of it grew the two parties which were eventually to
divide the Church of England—the party of puritanism (of which
Knox is to be regarded as one of the chief founders), and the party
which accepted Elizabeth's policy of compromise.
The condition of the protestants in Scotland under the regency
of Mary of Lorraine evoked another series of long epistles, the
burden of which was an arraignment of the policy of the govern-
ment and an exhortation to the faithful to look confidently for-
ward to a day fast coming when the true religion would prevail.
From 1555 to 1559, with the exception of a visit to Scotland
during part of the years 1555 and 1556, Knox made his home in
Geneva, where he acted, for a time, as co-pastor to a congregation
of English exiles, more in harmony with his own opinions than
that of Frankfort. His passionate desire, however, was to preach
his
gospel in England and Scotland, but this desire he saw thwarted
by the two female rulers who now governed these countries. It
was out of the indignation of his baffled hopes, therefore, that,
in 1558, he published his First Blast of the Trumpet against the
Monstruous Regiment of Women, which of all his works had the
widest notoriety in his own day. From the classical writers, the
## p. 145 (#167) ############################################
John Knox.
Pamphlets
145
Roman law, the Bible and the Fathers, he supports the argument
for which he vehemently contends—that 'to promote a Woman to
beare rule, superioritie, dominion, or empire above any Realme,
Nation or Citie is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, a
thing most contrarious to his reveled will and approved ordinance. '
In his main contention, Knox was at one with the most influential
writers of the sixteenth century, Jean Bodin among others, but,
even by divines of his own way of thinking, his pamphlet was
generally regarded as a hasty and ill-considered performance. In
1559, it was answered by John Aylmer, one of the Marian exiles,
subsequently bishop of London, in his Harborowe for Faithfull
and Trewe Subjectes agaynst the late blowne Blaste concerning the
Government of Women, in which the most effective point made is
that, as a limited monarchy, England is specially guarded from
the drawbacks incident to female sovereignty. But the course of
public events proved to be the most stringent commentary on the
contention of the Blast. At the close of the very year of its
publication Mary Tudor died and the protestant Elizabeth suc-
ceeded to the throne of Englandan event which Knox was bound
to recognise as the happiest dispensation for the welfare of his
own cause.
While still in Geneva, Knox produced another work, of less
resounding notoriety than the Blast, but a more solid and careful
performance. This was his Answer to a great Nomber of
blasphemous cavillations written by an Anabaptist and adver-
sarie to God's eternal Predestination. Like all his more important
works, it was prompted by the circumstances of the moment. The
dogma of predestination was the foundation of the theological
system of Calvin, to whom Knox looked as his spiritual father, but
the doctrine had been impugned by many, and notably by Sebastian
Castalio, who had been expelled from Geneva for the general
heterodoxy of his opinions. From the protestants in England,
also, there came a request to their brethren in Geneva that they
would prepare a reply to a book which had recently been written
against the same dogma, and to Knox was assigned the task. The
result was his lengthy treatise on predestination which fills one
volume of the six that comprise his published works. It is
Knox's most elaborate effort in constructive theology, but,
strenuous and dexterous though he is in meeting the arguments
of his adversary, he possessed neither the self-control nor the
systematising genius which made his master, Calvin, the law-
giver of reformed doctrine. It is to Calvin's Institutes of the
2
L. L. III.
CH. VII.
10
## p. 146 (#168) ############################################
146 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
Christian Religion, and not to Knox's treatise, that the followers
of both must have recourse for the magistral statement of the
constitutive dogma of their theological system.
The triumph of the reforming party in Scotland in 1559 at
length restored Knox to his native country, where his presence
was to be the dominating fact in the political and religious
situation, and where he was to produce the work which is the
great literary monument of the time. As the immediate result of
the victory of protestantism, appeared the First Book of Discipline,
of which Knox was not, indeed, the sole author, but which bears
his imprint on every page, and is the brief summary of his ideals
in religion and education. Here, as directly connected with the
literary history of Scotland, we are only concerned with the scheme
of national instruction which the book sets forth with detailed
precision. In every parish there was to be a school and in
every important town a college, from which the aptest scholars
were to be sent to the three universities-attendance in all three
grades being exacted by state and church. The poverty of the
country and protracted civil commotions prevented the scheme
from being realised; but an ideal had been set forth which never
passed out of sight, and, during successive centuries, the parish
schools of Scotland were the nursing homes of her most vigorous
intellectual life.
Like all his other works, Knox's Historie of the reformatioun
in Scotland was suggested by an immediate occasion and was
written to serve a special purpose. Its express aim was to justify
the proceedings of the protestant leaders who had been the chief
instruments in overthrowing the ancient religion, and it was at
their desire that he undertook the task. His book, therefore, is
essentially that of an apologist and not of a historian; and he
makes no disguise of the fact. That right and justice were all on
one side and that those who opposed the reformation were blinded
either by folly or iniquity, is his unflinching contention from the
first sentence to the last. So transparent is this assumption, how-
ever, that it hardly misleads the reader; and through what he
may consider the perversion of characters and events he cannot
fail to discern their salient and essential traits. Thus, in the most
remarkable parts of Knox's book, his interviews with queen Mary,
the weak points in his own cause and in his own personal character
are as manifest as those of his adversary. The History consists of
five books, the last of which, however, is so inferior in vigour to
the others that its materials must have been put together by
## p. 147 (#169) ############################################
Historie of the reformatioun in Scotland 147
another hand. It is in the first book, which traces the beginning
and progress of the reformation in Scotland, that Knox displays
his most striking gifts as a writer—such passages as those describ-
ing the rout of Solway Moss, the mission and death of George
Wishart and the battle of Pinkie being the nearest anticipation of
Carlyle to be found in English literature. In the second and
third books, we have one of the earliest examples of an appeal to
historical documents as vouchers for the truth of the narrative :
fully three-fourths of these books consisting of papers supplied by
the leaders of the reformation in Scotland and England. But it
is the fourth book that has made the most vivid impression on
the national memory, and may be said to have created the preva-
lent conception of the Scottish reformation. · The theme of this
book is the return of Mary to Scotland, and the compromise that
followed between her and the reforming leaders. Here we have
the reports of the dramatic interviews between Mary and Knox,
and of his fulminations from the pulpit in the church of St Giles,
and here, also, those characterisations of Mary and other leading
personages which are written for all time. What Sainte-Beuve
said of the Memoirs of Saint-Simon may be said with even greater
truth of Knox's History: the periods before and after that which
he describes are dim and obscure by comparison. And it is a
further tribute to the literary interest and importance of the book,
that it is the first original work in prose which Scotland had yet
produced. There had been translations and compilations in prose,
but there had not, as yet, been any work which bore the stamp of
individual genius and which might serve as a model for Knox's
undertaking. In this fact, and in his long residence in England and
association with Englishmen abroad, we have the explanation of
the diction—the anglicised Scots—which was made a reproach to
a
him by his Catholic adversaries.
Knox's History is the chief literary monument of the Scottish
reformation ; but to the same period belong a number of works,
more or less of a historical character, which prove that prose had
now become an accredited vehicle of expression as well as verse.
Next in literary quality to the work of Knox is The Historie and
Cronicles of Scotland by Robert Lindesay of Pitscottie-one
of the few productions of the time which can be read with
interest at the present day. Lindesay was an ardent protestant,
and, in the parts of his History where he deals with the
change of the national religion, he is a thoroughgoing partisan.
With religion, however, he is not primarily concerned, and his aim
1042
## p. 148 (#170) ############################################
148 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
is not controversial like that of Knox. What mainly interested
him in the past were picturesque episodes illustrating the manners
of the times and the characters of the leading actors; and it is to
him that we owe some of the most lively pictures in the national
history. As his easy credulity as well as the structure of his book
shows, Lindesay had no very severe criterion of historic accuracy.
His account of the reign of James II (1436—60), with which his
History begins, is merely a translation of Hector Boece's Latin
History of Scotland—a work of inventive imagination in which
the wildest fables are recorded as ascertained facts. From 1542
onwards, he drew upon his own observation or on the testimony of
eye-witnesses ; but it is precisely in this portion of his work that
he exhibits in least degree that gift of vivid narrative which made
him the delight of Sir Walter Scott as the nearest approach to a
Scottish Froissart.
Of a different order is the work of Sir James Melville of
Halbill, who, first as page to queen Mary and, afterwards, as
her ambassador, played a subordinate part in the transactions
of his time. His Memoirs, in which he records his own
observations of what he had seen and heard in the course of
his public life, still retain their value as one of the historical
sources for the period. Though a protestant in religion, he
possessed the confidence of Mary; and his sympathies are with
her and not with her rival, Elizabeth. Melville's point of view
is that of the courtier and the diplomatist, and in his decorous
and sober pages there is little indication of the seething
passions of the time. In the Memorials of Transactions in
Scotland (1569–73) of Richard Bannatyne, Knox's secretary,
we have another example of the stimulus given to historical
narrative by the events of the reformation. In the form of
a diary, Bannatyne records the events that he saw passing
before his eyes in those momentous years when the victory of
protestantism was definitely assured by the surrender of Edinburgh
Castle by the last champions of Mary. But the most memorable
passages in the book are those which record the last days of his
master, from whose hand there are some entries written in the
most vigorous style of his History. Another example of the general
interest in contemporary events is the Diary of Mr James Meb-
ville, Minister of Kilrenny in Fife (1566—1601). Of the nature
of an autobiography rather than of a diary, this is one of the most
delightful books of the kind in the language. In the author him-
self, we have the most attractive type of the Presbyterian pastor,
## p. 149 (#171) ############################################
Historians of the Period. Political Ballads 149
and his account of his home life and of his education at school and
university is of high value as a picture of the life of the time. As
a specimen of the Scottish language of the period, and as one
of the best known passages in early Scottish literature, his descrip-
tion of Knox preaching at St Andrews in his last days may hardly
be passed over:
I saw him everie day go hulie and fear (slowly and warily) with a furring
of martricks (martens) about his neck, a staff in the an hand, and guid godly
Richart Ballanden (Bannatyne] his servand, holdin upe the other oxter (arm-
pit) from the Abbaye to the paroche Kirk, and be the said Richart and
another servent lifted upe to the pulpit, whar he behovit to lean at his first
entrie; bot or he haid done with his sermont he was sa active and vigorus,
that he was lyk to ding that pulpit in blads (break the pulpit in pieces) and
Alie out of it.
A few other works, also of the nature of annals, though not
attaining to the dignity of literature, may be noted as illustrating
the interest in history which had been mainly occasioned by the
revolutionary events of the period. The Diurnal of remarkable
Occurents, a work by different hands, notes events from the time
of James V till the year 1575; the period from 1566 to 1596 is
dealt with in The Historie and Life of James the Seat, briefly
continued till 1617; and, further, we have the Memoirs of the
Affairs of Scotland (1577—1603) by David Moysie, and the Diary
of Robert Birrel (1532–1605).
The cultivation of prose was the most important literary result
of the reformation, but it did not check the tendency to versify-
ing which had been assiduously practised throughout the reigns
of the Jameses. In verse, however, there was produced no work
comparable to Knox's History in. prose. However we may explain
the fact, from the reformation dates a period of barrenness in
imaginative literature, similar to that which in England followed
the death of Chaucer, and it lasted to the poetic revival in the
beginning of the eighteenth century. With few exceptions, the
verse written during the reformation struggle was prompted by
the occasion of the hour-its principal themes being the sensational
events on which the destinies of the nation appeared to hang,
Printed in black letter on one side of a leaf of paper, ballads of
this character issued in a constant stream from the press of Robert
Lekprevik, the Edinburgh printer. Almost all of them were
written by supporters of the reformation, and are mainly coarse
and virulent attacks on Mary and such conspicuous persons as
were known to be her friends.
The principal authors to whom the ballads have been ascribed
are Robert Sempill, Sir John Maitland of Thirlstane, the Rev.
## p. 150 (#172) ############################################
150 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
John Davidson and Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange. Of Sempill,
the most prolific writer of his class, little is known beyond
the fact that he was an ardent supporter of the reformation
and an uncompromising enemy of queen Mary, and that he
lived in the thick of the sensational events of his time. His two
best pieces are the Sege of the Castel of Edinburgh and The
Legend of a Lymaris Lyfe, the coarse vigour of which sufficiently
explains his temporary popularity; but in none of his work does
Sempill rise to the dignity of poetic satire which ensures per-
manent literary interest. Sir John Maitland-better known in
political than in literary history as the framer of the act of 1592
which has been called the Magna Charta of the Church of Scotland
-strikes a higher note than Sempill. In the three poems that
have been attributed to him, Ane Admonition to my Lord
Regentis Grace, Ane Schort Invectyve aganis the Delyverance
of the Erle of Northumberland, and Aganis Sklanderous Tungis,
there is a restraint, a good sense and dignity, which became one
who filled successively the offices of a senator of the College of
Justice, of secretary of state and of lord high chancellor of
Scotland. To Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange only one piece
is assigned-Ane Ballat of the Captane of the Castell—that is,
of Edinburgh, the last stronghold held for queen Mary, of
which Kirkcaldy himself was the captain. Of little poetic
merit, this ballad has at least the distinction of being one of the
few in which loyalty to Mary is expressed with chivalrous and
heartfelt devotion-a devotion which he expiated with his life on
the capture of the castle in 1573. The reformation in Scotland
had no more strenuous adherent than the Rev. John Davidson,
and, as he lived till 1603, his uncompromising opinions brought
him into frequent trouble with James VI in his policy of suppress-
ing presbyterianism and introducing episcopacy. A personal friend
and admiring disciple of Knox, Davidson has extolled his virtues
and, at the same time, sketched the main events of his career in
Ane Brief Commendation of Uprichtness-a valuable document
for Knox's biographers. To the eulogy of Knox is also devoted
a second of the three poems known to be the work of Davidson-
Ane Schort Discurs of the Estaitis quha hes caus to deploir the
Deith of this excellent Servand of God, the closing lines of which
may be quoted as a specimen of the general level of his style:
Lyke as himself is unto gloir,
So sall all ages ay recyte
Johne Knoxis Name with greit decoir.
## p. 151 (#173) ############################################
Roman Catholic Writers. John Major 151
The writers who have been mentioned all belonged to the
reforming party, but, throughout the whole period, the ancient
church had also its representatives in literature, one of whom, at
least, had a European reputation in his own day. This was John
,
Mair or Major, who has been called 'the last of the schoolmen,'
and who is the one eminent thinker whom we can with certainty
say that Scotland gave to scholasticism. Born in Haddington-
shire in 1479, and dying in 1549 or 1550, Major lived to see the
beginnings of the reformation in Scotland, but, though in many
respects a liberal thinker both in religion and politics, he continued
to the end a steady adherent of the communion in which he was
a
reared. After a year's study (1493) at the university of Cambridge,
Major passed to the university of Paris, where, till 1518, with the
exception of a brief visit to Scotland, he was successively student,
regent in arts, and doctor in theology. From 1518 to 1525, he
lectured on logic and theology, first in the university of Glasgow
and afterwards in the university of St Andrews, where he had
George Buchanan as one of his pupils. Between 1525 and 1531,
he was again in Paris, where he was now regarded by all the
learned world as the most distinguished champion of medievalism
in its opposition to the new studies. He had attained this repu-
tation through the long series of his publications, begun in 1503,
of which the most notable was his Commentary on the Four
Books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1509). In all these
works, Major is the schoolman pure and simple; the subjects he
treats, his manner of handling them, are those of the medieval
logician when scholasticism had become an exhausted movement.
For the men of the new order, therefore, Major was an obscu-
rantist against whom ridicule was the only appropriate weapon.
Melanchthon selected him as the special object of attack in his
reply to the condemnation of Luther by the Sorbonne. 'I have
seen John Major's Commentaries on Peter Lombard,' he writes;
‘he is now, I am told, the prince of the Paris divines. Good
heavens! What wagon-loads of trifling. . . . If he is a specimen of
the Parisian, no wonder they have so little stomach for Luther. '
A shaft was aimed at Major by a still greater hand; in the
wonderful library of St Victor in Paris, Pantagruel found a book
entitled The Art of Making Puddings by John Major. Despite
the mockery of the humanists, however, there are ideas and
suggestions to be found in his voluminous disquisitions which
prove that he was a shrewd and independent thinker when he
addressed himself to practical questions. No reformer saw more
## p. 152 (#174) ############################################
152 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
clearly or denounced more stringently the corruptions and abuses
of the church as it existed in Scotland; he held as liberal opinions
as his pupil Buchanan regarding the relations of rulers and
subjects; and a suggestion which he threw out as to the most
effective method of dealing with mendicancy was adopted with
fruitful results in Germany and the Low Countries. But his good
sense and independent judgment are best exemplified in his one
book which is not a scholastic treatise—his Historia Majoris
Britanniae tam Angliae quam Scotiae. The Latin in which the
History is written shows no trace of the influence of the revival
of letters; it is the Latin of the schoolmen, impure, inharmonious
and difficult. On the other hand, Major as a historian stands on
a far higher level than that of the medieval chronicler. His work
bears no evidence of great research, but he carefully selects the
significant facts that were accessible to him, and judges men and
events, if not with philosophic grasp, yet with a genial shrewdness
which gives piquancy to his narrative. In six books he relates the
history of the two countries from the earliest times till the reigns
of Henry VII and James IV. What is noteworthy in his narrative
is his rejection of the legendary origins of Scotland which had
been invented to rebut the English claims of paramountcy, and
which continued to be retailed by Scottish historians into the
eighteenth century. But the most signal illustration of Major's
insight and originality is his attitude regarding the political
relations of the two kingdoms whose histories he relates. Almost
alone among his countrymen, and at a period when the hereditary
animosities of England and Scotland were never more intense, he
counselled political union as the natural consummation of their
respective destinies and in the best interest of both peoples.
One of the most notable specimens of the vernacular prose of
the period is the singular production entitled The Complaynt of
Scotland, the anonymous author of which was an adherent of the
ancient church, and an ardent opponent of the English alliance.
Primarily a political pamphlet, it was prompted by the miseries of
the country that followed the defeat of the Scots at Pinkie by the
duke of Somerset in 1547; and the object of its author is to point
out to his countrymen the various evils to which their misfortunes
were due. Till within recent years, the Complaynt was regarded
as an original work, but it is now known to be, in great part, an
adaptation of Le Quadrilogue Invectif of Alain Chartier (1422).
The object of Chartier's work was to encourage his countrymen
in their effort to expel the English, and, as the same situation now
.
## p. 153 (#175) ############################################
153
The Complaynt of Scotland
existed in Scotland, the author of the Complaynt found material
in Chartier ready to his hand. After an introduction, consisting
of an epistle to queen Mary and an epistle to the reader, the book
opens with a succession of chapters (the first mainly a translation
of Chartier), in which the author discourses on such themes as the
‘mutations of monarches,' the wrath of God against wicked
peoples, and the approaching end of the world-all with more or
less direct bearing on the miseries of Scotland. In chapter VI,
we have what the author calls 'ane monologue recreative,' in
which, with curious irrelevancy, a shepherd is made to expound
the Ptolemaic system. Then follows what is to be considered the
main portion of the book-the vision of Dame Scotia and her
indictment of the iniquities of nobles, clergy and commons, which
have pro ced the existing miseries of their country. Here, again,
the author is indebted to Chartier, from whom he has appropriated
the conception of the vision, besides certain portions of his text.
Such is the general plan of this fantastic production, which may
have been drawn from other sources not yet discovered. Regarded
merely as a specimen of early Scottish prose, however, the book
has an interest of its own. The author himself assures us that he
uses the domestic scottis language'-a statement which he
modifies by the further remark that he found it necessary 'til myxt
oure langage vitht part of termis dreuyn [derived] fra Lateen. '
Another source of interest in the book is the multitude of curious
details regarding the life of the time which are not to be found
elsewhere. Of its author nothing is known, though he has been
variously identified with Sir James Inglis, abbot of Cambuskenneth,
Sir James Inglis, abbot of Culross, Sir David Lyndsay and one of
the three Wedderburns. From the book itself, we gather that he
was a Catholic and an enemy of England; and the recent discovery
that he had read a manuscript of Octavien St Gelais, bishop of
Angoulême, suggests that he may have been in the suite of queen
Mary in France, and strengthens the conjecture that the work was
printed in Paris in 1548 or 1549.
A notable volume was archbishop Hamilton's Catechism
(1552), so called because it was issued by his authority after
receiving the sanction of a provincial council. Written in the
purest Scots of the time, the Catechism presents the fundamental
Catholic doctrines in the simplest and most attractive form,
though in the tumultuous period that followed its publication
it had little influence in turthering the cause of its promoters.
The most eminent defender of the old church was Quintin
## p. 154 (#176) ############################################
154 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
!
Kennedy, a son of the second earl of Cassillis, who, in 1558,
published The Compendius Tractive, which stated the case
against protestantism with such persuasiveness and ability that,
by the admission of an opponent, it perceptibly affected the
progress of the new opinions. Better known than his Tractive,
however, is the Ressoning between him and Knox: the record of
an oral controversy that took place at May bole in 1562, and lasted
for three days.
A larger amount of work was produced by Ninian Winzet,
another Catholic controversialist, who, in his Certain Tractatis
for Reformatioun of Doctryne and Manneris (1562) frankly
admitted the corruptions of the Catholic church in Scotland,
but contended that they afforded no rational ground for changing
the national religion. It is noteworthy in Winzet and other
Roman Catholic writers of the time that they claimed to be
the upholders of the national tradition not only in religion but in
policy. In the alliance with England, but for whose intervention
the reformation in Scotland would not have been accomplished,
they saw the ruin of their country; and all things English were
the objects of their special detestation. For this reason it was
that they resented the intrusion of English words into the Scottish
vocabulary, and regarded it as a patriotic duty to write in what
they considered the purest Scots. In a well known sentence,
Winzet caustically upbraids Knox (who, in point of fact, wrote for
England as well as for Scotland) for his use of English modes of
expression. 'Gif you,' he writes, “throw curiositie of novations
has forget our auld plane Scottis quhilk your mother lerit you :
in tymes cuming I sall write to you my mynd in Latin ; for I am
not acquynted with your Southeroun. '
The highest place among the Catholic writers of the period un-
doubtedly belongs to John Leslie, bishop of Ross, the friend, adviser
and most distinguished champion of Mary, whom he attended during
her imprisonment in England.
of the king, who, about the same time, was encouraging Buchanan
to satirise the Franciscans. Henry Charteris, the first publisher
of Lyndsay's Works, could attribute Lyndsay's escape from per-
secution only to the special intervention and mercy of heaven;
but it is to be remembered that Lyndsay did not, like Buchanan,
direct his attacks against any special religious order, that he
enjoyed the intimate friendship of the king and, it may be, of
Mary of Lorraine as well, and that he was not a preacher, nor
even a full-blown reformer. He was neither Calvinist nor
puritan, and was less interested in disputes about doctrines and
forms of church polity than in the social and political well-being
of the people.
Ane Pleasant Satyre is a morality play, but it is also some-
thing more. It is a blend of secular and sacred drama, and
embodies something of the French morality farce. It introduces
real, as well as allegorical, personages, and it lightens the action
of the play by comic devices borrowed from French models. In
parts, it manifests the special characteristics of modern comedy.
It inevitably does so by reason of the very specific character of
its satirical representation of contemporary manners. Though
>
## p. 124 (#146) ############################################
I 24
Sir David Lyndsay
hampered as a comedy by its morality conventions, it is a morality
play of a very advanced type: a morality play aided in its
dramatic action and relieved in its dramatic seriousness by a
strong infusion of comedy, and by the intermixture of interludes
of a strikingly realistic character. The strictly morality portions
are superior to the morality plays of Bale; and the interludes are
much more elaborate and finished specimens of comedy than the
interludes of Heywood. Lyndsay's knowledge of the ways of
the world and of the temper and characteristics of the crowd,
and the minute character of his zeal as a reformer, were impor-
tant elements contributing to his dramatic success. Neither in
this nor in other satires was he content with generalities. His
desire was to scourge the definite social evils of his time, and
he had therefore to represent them in living form, as manifested
in the speech, manner and bearing of individual persons
For this reason, the play is of unique interest as a mirror of the
Scotland of Lyndsay's time—when Catholicism was tottering to its
fall. It is an excessively long play, its representation occupying a
whole day, from nine in the morning until six in the evening; but
its length enables the playwright to present a pretty comprehensive
epitome of contemporary abuses and of contemporary manners and
morals. The flagrant frailties of the ecclesiastics are portrayed
with sufficient vividness in the speeches of representative types
and in the amusing exposition of their relations with allegorical
personages, good and bad; but it is in the tone of Lyndsay's wit, in
the character of the horseplay by which he seeks to tickle his
audience, in his method of pandering to their grosser tastes, in the
farcical proceedings of such persons as the soutar, the tailor and
their two wives, in the interviews between Pauper and Pardoner,
in the dealings of Pardoner with the soutar and the soutar's wife
and in the doings and speeches of Folly, that the peculiar social
atmosphere of the time is most graphically revealed.
The play is divided into two parts, and part I, which represents
the temptation of Rex Humanitas by Sensualitie, is divided into
two acts, with an interlude between them. Sensualitie is intro-
duced to the king by Wantonness, Placebo and Solace, in whose
company he then passes to a private apartment, after which Gude
Counsell makes his appearance. Gude Counsell declares his inten-
tion to ‘repois sometime in this place, but is immediately followed
by Flatterie and Falset, who, shortly after they have congratulated
each other on their happy meeting, are joined by their indispensable
companion Dissait; whereupon, the three resolve to introduce them-
## p. 125 (#147) ############################################
Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis 125
selves to the king under the guise respectively of Devotion, Sapience
and Discretion. Shortly afterwards, the king returns to the stage
and calls for Wantonness, who introduces him to the three vices;
and, after a conversation with him in their feigned characters, in
the course of which their proficiency in their several methods of
guile is admirably indicated, he gives them welcome as 'three men
of gude. Here the king, observing Gude Counsell standing
dejectedly at a distance, sends his new friends to bring him to
his presence; but, when they discover who he is, they hustle him
out of the place, threatening him with death should he dare to
return. They then inform the king that the person he saw was a
house-breaker whom they had ordered to be sent to the thieves'
hole. Gude Counsell having been expelled, the king is now entirely
in the hands of his evil companions, and sits down amongst the
ladies, who sing to him a song, led by Sensualitie. Here Veritie
makes her appearance carrying a New Testament, but is speedily
followed by the Spiritualitie—including the abbot and the parson
-who, at the instance of Flatterie, put Veritie in the stocks, after
she had offered up an impressive prayer, beginning:
Get up, thou sleepis all too long, O Lord !
And mak sam ressonibill reformatioun.
Veritie being disposed of, Chastitie makes her appearance,
whom, on her asking for ‘harberie, Diligence recommends to go
to a 'prioress of renown,' sitting amongst the rest of the Spiri-
tualitie. The prioress, however, asks her to keep her distance, the
Spiritualitie tell her to pass on, for they know her 'not, and even
Temporalitie informs her that, if his wives knew she were here, they
would 'mak all this town on steir. ' With the sorrowful departure
of Chastitie from the company, act I ends. It is admirably con
ceived and written, the terseness and point of the satire being
accentuated by the very skilful management of the dramatic
situations.
Act 1 is followed by an interlude, relating the adventures of
Chastitie after her expulsion from high society. On introducing
herself to a tailor and soutar, she is cordially welcomed by these
worthies; but, while they are entertaining her, their wives enter,
and, after a boisterous scene, during which the wives set on their
husbands in savage fashion both with tongue and hand, Chastitie
is driven away; whereupon, after further dinging' of their
'gudemen,' the wives resolve to have a feast in celebration of
their victory, the tailor's wife sitting down to make 'ane paist,'
6
## p. 126 (#148) ############################################
126
Sir David Lyndsay
and the soutar's wife kilting up her clothes above her waist, that
she may cross the river on her way to the town to fetch a quart
of wine.
Diligence (the master of the ceremonies), who had found
Chastitie wandering houseless, late at night, at the beginning of
act II introduces her to the king; but, Sensualitie objecting to her
presence, she is put in the stocks by the three disguised vices.
She is, however, comforted by Veritie with the news that Divyne
Correctioun is 'new landit, and might be expected very soon.
Hereupon, Correctioun's varlet (or messenger) enters, on hearing
whose message Flatterie resolves to take refuge with the
Spiritualitie or hide himself in some cloister. He therefore bids
adieu to his two friends, who, before leaving, resolve to steal the
king's box, but quarrel over the division of the spoil and Dissait
runs away with the box through the water, just as Divyne
Correctioun enters. At the instance of Correctioun, Gude Counsell
and Veritie are set free from the stocks, and, accompanied by
Veritie, Gude Counsell and Chastitie pass to the king. On the
advice of Correctioun, the king then consents to the expulsion of
Sensualitie, who, on seeking the protection of the Spiritualitie, is
warmly welcomed by them as their dayis darling. By further
'
'
advice of Correctioun, the king then receives into his society Gude
Counsell, Veritie and Chastitie; and, on their confessing their faults
and promising to have no further dealings with Sensualitie,
Correctioun also pardons Wantonness, Placebo and Solace. Then,
after a speech by Gude Counsell, Diligence, by order of the king,
warns all members of parliament, both the Spiritualitie and the
Temporalitie, to appear speedilyat court. He then intimates that the
first part of the play is ended, and that there will be a short interval
—which he recommends them to employ in refreshing themselves
and in other ways not now mentioned in ordinary company.
Between the first part and the second there is an interlude, while
the ‘king, bishops and principal players are out of their places. '
It introduces us to a pauper, who is really a small farmer reduced
to poverty by ecclesiastical oppression, and on his way to
St Andrews to seek redress. When Diligence endeavours to
drive him away as ane vilde begger carle,' he climbs up to the
king's chair and seeks to seat himself in it. With some difficulty
Diligence succeeds in making him vacate it, but, struck by his sad
and respectable demeanour, asks him where he comes from and what
is his errand. Pauper then recites to him in moving terms the
story of his wrongs at the hands of the ecclesiastics, who have
6
## p. 127 (#149) ############################################
6
Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis 127
brought him to utter poverty by their greedy extortions on the
death of his father, his mother and his wife, which had successively
occasioned him the loss of his mare and his three cows; while even
the clothes of the deceased persons have been seized as perquisites
by the vicar's clerk. After telling his pitiable story, Pauper, with
the consent of Diligence, lays him down to rest; and there enters
Pardoner, who, unchallenged by Diligence, proceeds to make a
speech in which he rails at the 'wicket New Testament,' which
has greatly injured his trade, and exposed the craft which he had
been taught by a friar called Hypocrisy; bans Martin Luther,
Black Bullinger and Melanchthon; and expresses the wish that
Paul had never been born, or his books never read except by
friars. Then, placing his wares on a board, he proceeds to dilate
on their several merits, the picturesque recital being, on Lyndsay's
part, a masterpiece of mocking irony, full of grotesque allusions
admirably adapted to provoke the amused mirth of the rude crowd.
The soutar, who, meanwhile, has entered and listened to the recital,
now resolves to take advantage of Pardoner's arrival to obtain
a dispensation for separation from his wife. While he is in con-
ference with the holy man for this purpose, his wife appears, just in
time to hear his very plain-spoken description of her character and
doings; but, although furiously angry with him for libelling her as
he has done, she, in answer to Pardoner's query, affirms that she is
content with all her heart to be separated from him; and,
thereupon, Pardoner, on condition that they perform a mutual
ceremony too coarse for description, sends them away uncoupled,
'with Belial's best blessing. ' Then, after an interview between
Pardoner and his boy-servant Willikin, during which we obtain the
information that village middens are the chief hunting grounds for
Pardoner's holy relics, Pauper awakes from sleep. On Pauper
handing to the holy man his solitary groat, Pardoner guarantees
him in return a thousand years of pardons; but, since Pauper
cannot see the pardons and has no evidence that he has obtained
anything, he comes to the conclusion that he is merely being
robbed; and the interlude ends with a grotesque encounter
between the two, during which Pauper pitches both board and
relics into the water.
Part II deals more specifically with the evils of the time than
part 1 The three estates, in response to the previous summons,
now appear before the king; but they are shown us walking back-
wards, led by their vices—Spiritualitie by Covetousness and
Sensualitie, Temporalitie (the Lords) by Publick Oppression and
## p. 128 (#150) ############################################
128
Sir David Lyndsay
Merchant (the representatives of the burghs) by Falset and Dissait.
On Diligence, however, summoning all who are oppressed to come
and make their complaint to the king, John the Commoun Weill
makes his appearance, and, after a piquant conversation with the
king, denounces the vices of the three estates in no measured
terms, and requires that such scandalous persons should be put in
the stocks, which, at the instance of Correctioun, is immediately
done, Spiritualitie bidding Covetousness and Sensualitie a farewell,
the sadness of which is mitigated by the hope of soon meeting
them again. Then, at the instance of John the Commoun Weill,
who delivers an impressive address on the abuses of the adminis-
tration, the Temporal Estates repent of their conduct, promise
amendment and embrace John the CommounWeill. The Spiritualitie,
however, not only remain impenitent, but impudently seek to repre-
sent their doings as in the highest degree exemplary; the abbot,
the parson and the lady prioress, each in characteristic fashion,
seeking to show that their violation of their vows, so far from
being dishonourable, is rather to their credit than not, and that
their sins of omission are really condoned by the character of what
are usually deemed their sins of commission. This leads to a long
debate, during which Pauper, and also the soutar, the tailor,
a scribe and Common Thift, all add liveliness and point to the dis-
cussion. Then Common Thift—who had no other resource but to
steal—is induced by Oppressioun to go into the stocks in Oppres-
sioun's stead, on condition that Oppressioun will come again soon
and relieve him; but Oppressioun slinks away from the scene,
leaving Common Thift unsuccoured. Doctor, then, at the instance
of Correctioun, mounts the pulpit, and delivers a sermon amid
ill-mannered interruptions from the abbot and the parson. During
its delivery, Diligence spies a friar whispering with the abbot, and,
suspecting that he intends to 'set the town on steir' against the
preacher, has him apprehended; and, on his being brought in by
the sergeant and stripped of his habit, he is seen to be no other
than Flatterie. The lady prioress is then spoiled of her habit, and,
on being discovered to have been wearing under it a kirtle of silk,
gives her malison to her parents for compelling her to be a nun,
and not permitting her to marry. Flatterie is then put in the
stocks, and the three prelates are stripped of their habits, which
are put upon three sapient, cunning clerks. The prelates seek to
find comfort from Covetousness and Sensualitie; but these former
friends now renounce them, and they depart to earn an honest
living in secular occupations. Thereafter, John the Commoun
-
## p. 129 (#151) ############################################
Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis 129
Weill, clothed in gorgeous apparel, takes his place in the parlia-
ment, and, after acts have been passed for the reform of clamant
abuses, the malefactors in the stocks are led to the gallows.
Flatterie saves himself by undertaking the office of executioner;
and with their characteristic last speeches and Flatterie's cynical
self-congratulation, the drama proper is brought to a close.
This latter portion, which is a good deal longer and more com-
plicated in its action than part I, is, at the same time, more
diversely and elaborately clever. It is enlivened by a great
variety of picturesque incidents, and the satire is so pointed and
so topical, and the various dénouements are led up to with such
admirable wit, that the audience must have been kept throughout
in a high state of amused excitement, mingled with righteous
expectation, and must, at the close, have been not less seriously
impressed with the lessons of the play, than enthusiastic over
its dramatic merits.
The play proper is followed, for the diversion of the multitude,
by a farcical interlude, after the manner of the French mono-
logues, a comic sermon being delivered by a buffoon dressed up
as Follie, in which shrewd advice is mingled with an extremely
coarse display of low wit.
If the glamour of poetry be absent from The Pleasant Satyre,
its sententiousness and wit are occasionally varied by strains of
lofty eloquence; and, if its moralising seems to us a little tedious
and commonplace, it would have a different aspect to Lyndsay's
contemporaries. Moreover, the more serious portions of the play
are relieved by an unfailing flow of witty satire, which is all
the more irresistible in that the special idiosyncrasy of each
wicked or foolish character is revealed with admirable consistency,
and that each is unconsciously made the exponent of his own
wickedness or folly. Viewed as literature, the merit of the play
is of a high order: the style is always clear, terse and pointed,
even when neither witty nor eloquent. Though rather rough and
careless in his rhythm, Lyndsay shows an easy command of rime
as well as some skill in varying his metres to suit his subject.
The dialogues are, for the most part, in an eight-lined stave in the
rime couée used in early English plays, or in the octosyllabic couplet;
but, for various recitals in character, he has recourse to a rimed
alliterative stave used in several old romances, to the heroic
couplet, to the French octave and the kyrielle; and to various
forms of the six-lined stave in rime couée, including that which
was a favourite of Burns.
E. L. III.
9
OH. VI.
## p. 130 (#152) ############################################
130
Sir David Lyndsay
The satirical Tragedie of the Cardinal, written shortly after the
death of cardinal Beaton, and printed, probably, in 1547, a kind of
parody of the lives in Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Ilustrium,
offers a detailed account of the cardinal's errors in conduct and
policy, which his ghostly personality is supposed to relate as a
warning to prelates and princes; but the dejection of the dis-
embodied individuality seems to affect the poem, which is one of
the least sprightly of Lyndsay's poetic efforts. Even so, however, it
compares favourably with the long Dialog betuix Experience and
Ane Courteour, which seems to have been suggested by Lyndsay's
epitome. Opening with a discussion of the moral reasons for
human suffering and misery, it includes an argument for the
circulation of the Bible in the vernacular, an account of the
creation of Adam and Eve, a prelection on man's first sin, an
explanation and description of the Flood, an account of the rise
and fall of the four great monarchies—which, according to the
author, were the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian and the Roman
-a reference to the first spiritual or papal monarchy with a
description of the court of Rome and a dissertation on death,
Anti-Christ and the general Judgment.
Only two other of Lyndsay's pieces remain to be mentioned,
and they are of an entirely non-didactic nature: The Deplora-
tioun of the Death of Queen Magdalene and The Historie of the
Squyer Meldrum. The former, in rime royal, is modelled on the
aureate method adopted by Dunbar in his more ceremonial pieces,
but lacks the imposing musical melody of Dunbar's verse, and jolts
along in a rather rough and uneven fashion. In couplets, Lyndsay
was more at his ease, and in this medium he has related the varied
and surprising adventures of a Fife neighbour, Squire William
Meldrum, umwhile laird of Cleish and Binns, with unfailing spirit
and with a point and graphic particularity that, to the modern
reader, is sometimes a little disconcerting. Modelled after the
Squire's Tale of Chaucer, Lyndsay's narrative, though in substance
reļating the actual experiences and achievements of Meldrum,
reproduces them with a gloss which makes the poem assume the
form of a kind of burlesque of the old romances. Apart from its
special merits, it is of interest as revealing Lyndsay's enjoyment
of mere merriment devoid of satire.
Of James V, Lyndsay's royal patron, no verses that can be
authenticated survive; for he can as little be credited with the
authorship of Peblis and Christis Kirk, as of The Gaberlunzie Man
## p. 131 (#153) ############################################
Minor Poets
131
and The Jolly Beggars. For an account of Lyndsay's other poetic
contemporaries and a summary of their individual merits we are
indebted to Lyndsay's prologue to The Complaynt of the Papyngo.
Of the poetry of Sir James Inglis, whom he commends as
without a superior 'in ballatis, farces and in plesant playis,' and
who is credited by some with the authorship of The Complaynt
of Scotland, no examples remain that are definitely known to
be his. John Bellenden, the translator of Boethius and Livy,
prefixed to his translations moral ‘prohemiums' ornamented
with classical allusions, and is also the author of 'a godly and
lernit work callit The Banner of Pietie,' contained in the Banna-
tyne MS; but these specimens of his art far from justify Lyndsay's
eulogy of him as ‘ane plant of poetis. ' To Kyd, the Bannatyne MS
ascribes The Richt Fontane of hailfull Sapience, which may well
enough have been the production of one who Lyndsay affirms was
'in cunnyng and practick rycht prudent,' for it is admirable rather
as advice than as poetry. Stewarte, who, while Lyndsay wrote, was
daily compiling 'full ornate werkis,' and who, in Rolland's Seven
Sages, is referred to as a court poet, is represented in the Banna-
tyne MS by several pieces very much in the style of Dunbar,
including a ribald Flyting betwix the Sowtar and the Tailyour,
and an aureate love poem—in the French octave with refrain-
For to declare the hie Magnificence of Ladies—which he does with
more ardour than inspiration. Stewarte of Lorne, also reterred to
by Lyndsay, may possibly be the W. Stewarte whose name is
attached in the Bannatyne MS to a short allegorical piece entitled
This Hinder Nycht neir by the Hour of Nine. John Rolland, a
Dalkeith notary who, about 1560, wrote The Sevin Sages, was also
the author of a long and dull allegorical piece, entitled The Court
of Venus. Among poetry of later date than 1530, in the Banna-
tyne MS, is Gife Langour makis men licht, attributed to lord
Darnley, but, we must suppose, written by some unknown poet as
an imaginary representation of Darnley's sentiments ; a humorous
love-song ( Gallandis AU I cry and call, signed ‘Balnaves'; two
love-songs, signed 'Fethy,' and, probably, the production of Sir
John Futhy, a priest and organist, who is also credited, by the MS
of Thomas Wode in Dublin university, with the authorship of a
sacred song O God abufe set to music by himself, but of which
no copy is known to survive; a song Be Merry Brethren, signed
'Fleming,' and consisting of a series of advices to husbands as to
how to deal with unruly wives; a short humorous piece, Brother
Beware, I red you now, attributed to Sir John Moffat, to whom
>
9_2
## p. 132 (#154) ############################################
132
Later Scottish Poetry
another than Bannatyne attributes that humorous rural tale The
Wyf of Auchtirmuchty; two love poems The Lanterne of Lufe
and Absent, attributed to Steill, who is also the author of a
romance in the Maitland MS, entitled The Ring of the Roy
Robert. In quite a different vein is the lament of one Clapperton,
in the Maitland MS, In Bowdin on blak Monanday. In the
Bannatyne MS are three grossly witty ballads on notorious
courtesans of the time, written by Robert Sempill, the author of
powerfully satirical reformation broadsides, including The Legend
and Discourse of the life of the Tulchene Bischope of St An-
drews. Most of the verses of these and other decidedly more
minor poets in the Bannatyne and Maitland MSS manifest con-
siderable technical skill; but both in subject and manner they
are largely imitative, and, though their wit is occasionally clever,
they generally lack the distinctive qualities of poetry. Most of
the anonymous verse in the Bannatyne and Maitland MSS, belongs,
evidently, to an earlier period than that of Lyndsay and has been
discussed in an earlier chapter of the present work; indeed,
there is definite proof of early date in regard to many pieces, in-
cluding some of the finest songs; but there are a few, such as My
Hart is quhyt, which are probably of the time of Alexander Scott,
if not even by Scott himself.
A satirical piece of about Lyndsay's time, and preserved by
Knox in his Historie of the reformatioun, is the earl of Glencairn's
Epistle direct from the Holy hermit of Allarit to his Brethren the
Gray Freiris; and a later versifier, who manifests something
of Lyndsay's spirit and method, though little of his vigour or
skill, is William Lauder, afterwards minister of Forgandenny,
who wrote in octosyllabic couplets Ane Compendious and breve
Tractate concernyng the office and dewtie of Kyngis, Spirituall
Pastoris, and Temporall Jugis (1556) and is the author of several
minor poems of somewhat similar intent.
A social satirist of a much milder type than Lyndsay was
Sir Richard Maitland, who was not very much Lyndsay's senior
in years, though most of his verse was written after Lyndsay's
death. A descendant of the Richard de Matelant who defended
the family keep of Thirlestane against Edward I, and whose
deeds were celebrated in ancient song and story, Maitland
belonged to that class of Scottish gentry from which govern-
ment and court officials were chiefly drawn, and held the office
of judge from the time of James V until 1584. Having, about
his sixtieth year, lost his sight, he, partly to divert his mind from
## p. 133 (#155) ############################################
Sir Richard Maitland
133
the troubles of the time, partly to occupy the now duller hours
of his leisure, devoted them, with the aid of his daughter, to
literature; and, besides compiling A Chronicle and Historie of
the House and Surname of Seatone, and composing a good many
poetical pieces, he set himself to gather the collection of Scottish
MS poetry, which, copied out by his daughter, is now preserved
in the Pepysian library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In his
poetry, as well as otherwise, he is a survival of the ante-reformation
period. As regards both the form and spirit of his verse, he is
a disciple of Dunbar, though his satire lacks Dunbar's boisterous
humour and keenness of wit, and his reflective pieces Dunbar's
emotional pungency. He has nothing in common with Lyndsay:
though quite alive to the evils of the old régime, he did not, while
it existed, make them the object of his satire ; nor, when the new
régime was established, was he by any means persuaded of that
régime's perfection. In Quhair is the Blytheness that has been he
laments the decay of the old merry customs, and in his Miseries of
the Tyme he bewails the lack of any real amendment either in
church or state. Like his famous son, William the secretary, he was
more an enlightened patriot and a shrewd man of the world than
either an ecclesiastical or political partisan. The evils of internal
dissension and strife are set forth by him in the poems Of the Assem-
blie of the Congregation, 1559, and on the New Yeir, 1560; and, at
a later period, he advocated a reconciliation of the two parties in
a
Againis the Division of the Lordis, On Union among the Lordis,
Againis Discord among the Lordis and Lament for the Disorders
of the Cuntrie. He brought to the consideration of social, political
and religious questions much of the impartiality and practical
worldly wisdom of the judge ; and his satire is severest when he
deals with social disorders or violations of the law, as in The Satire
of the Aige and Againis the Theivis of Liddisdaill, the latter of
which has something of the denunciatory rush of Dunbar's Donald
Owre, on which it is modelled. In The Satire of the Toun Ladeis,
an amusing recital of the extravagant caprices of contemporary
female fashions, his tone is mainly that of half cynical, half good-
humoured mockery, while his verses on the Folye of Ane auld
man maryand ane Young Woman, are shrewdly sententious
and mildly witty in the suggestive fashion characteristic of
the time. The Ballat of the Greatness of the World, prompted,
it may be, like Lyndsay's Dialog, by a perusal of the translation
of the Scriptures, and written in the stave of The Cherrie and the
Slae, indicates his acceptance of the conventional beliefs of his
## p. 134 (#156) ############################################
134
Later Scottish Poetry
a
time; but the poem is a very uninspired performance; and much
more of his real self appears in the half humorous, half melancholy
musings of such pieces as Na Kyndes without Siller, Gude Coun-
seillis, Advyce to lesum Merynes and Solace of Aige. Maitland
was hardly a poet, nor is he of much account as a satirist ; but
his verse is of considerable interest as a record of the ingenuous
sentiments of a highly accomplished and upright man, who, at this
troubled and critical period of Scottish history, kept, in a manner,
aloof from both parties.
Alexander Scott, almost the only lyrist, except such as are
anonymous, of importance amongst the old Scottish poets, stands
still more aloof in spirit than Maitland from the emotional and
fervent zeal of the reformers. His poetry is entirely secular
in theme and manner, with the exception of a translation of
two psalms, the first and the fiftieth, which, though cleverly rimed,
are both of them rather frigid and mechanical. Seeing Mont-
gomerie refers to him, in 1584, as 'old Scott,' he was probably
born not later than towards the close of the first quarter of
the sixteenth century. If, again, his supposed Lament of the
Master of Erskine be properly named, he most likely began to
write not later than 1547, for the master, who is reported to have
been the lover of the queen dowager, was slain at Pinkie in that
year, and the poem is credited with embodying his imaginary
farewell to her. Of May must, also, have been written before the
act of parliament passed in 1555 against the old May celebrations;
and, although the only other poem of his that can be dated is his
New Yeir Gift to Queen Mary, 1562, none of his verses that has
been preserved is of later date than 1568.
Of the thirty-six pieces of which Scott is known to be the
author, thirty are of an amatory character, and the majority of
them seem to have been greatly influenced in style and spirit by
the love lyrics in Tottels Miscellany, 1557, whether Scott had
an acquaintance with such pieces before they were published or
not. To Scott's verse there thus attaches a certain special interest,
as suggesting the possibility of a new school of Scottish poetry,
which, while retaining certain northern characteristics, would
gradually become more and more assimilated to the English
school; but this possibility had already been made futile by the
triumph of a puritanic reformation. Scott was a creation of the
ante-reformation period; and, although his themes and his method
of treatment are partly suggested by the lyrical school of England,
he may still be regarded as, primarily, the pupil of Dunbar. The
## p. 135 (#157) ############################################
Alexander Scott
135
influence of the English school is modified by characteristics that
are distinctly Scottish. While the Miscellany seems to have
suggested to him the appropriateness of short staves for certain
forms of the love lyric, he was not content to confine himself to
the staves that were there represented ; as a metrist he belongs
properly to the school of the old Scottish 'makaris. ' Besides
utilising several of Dunbar's staves he had recourse to a variety of
earlier staves in rime couée ; and in the use of these medieval forms
he shows a consummate mastery. His distinct poetic gift is shown
in the facility, the grace and the musical melody of his verse, and his
power of mirroring sentiment and emotion in sound and rhythm;
and there are also qualities in the tone and spirit of his verse that
individualise it and distinguish it from the lyrical school of England.
It is not so much imitative, as representative of his own charac-
teristic personality. He is terser, more pungent, more aphoristic
than the English lyrists. In most of his lyrics, the emotional note
vibrates more strongly-in the utterance of joy, as in Up Helsum
Hairt; in the expression of sorrowful resignation, as in The Lament
of the Master of Erskine, and Oppressit Hairt Indure; or in the
record of his amatory experiences, as in Lo Quhat it is to Lufe;
and it may further be added that when, as in the Ballad maid
to the Derisioun and Scorne of Wantoun Wemen, he is inde-
corous, he evinces a grossness that his English contemporaries
cannot rival.
Apart from his lyrics and his translation of
two psalms, the only other pieces of Scott are The New Yeir
Gift, and The Justing and Debait. In the former, after com-
plimenting the queen in the aureate fashion of Dunbar, he
devotes himself to a recital of the social evils of the time, more
after the manner of Maitland than of Lyndsay; and he concludes
with an envoy in which he gives an elaborate display of his
accomplishments in alliteration and internal rime. The Justing
and Debait, written in the Christis Kirk stave, is a mock
tournament piece after the fashion of Dunbar's Turnament and
Lyndsay's Justing, but less an uproarious burlesque than a lightly
witty narrative.
Alexander Montgomerie, the last of the Scottish 'makaris,'
probably held some office at the court of James VI, and, most
likely, was the king's chief instructor in the art of verse. He
has a good deal in common with Scott, of whom he may be
reckoned a kind of disciple. His temperament was, however, less
poetical; he lacked Scott's geniality as well as artistic grace;
he was more varied and voluminous; he was a still greater, if
## p. 136 (#158) ############################################
136
Later Scottish Poetry
a less successful, experimenter in curious metres, and, as might
be supposed from his later date, he was, in some respects, still
more influenced by the English school. Still, like Scott, as a
metrist, he belongs to the Scottish school, the metres which he
invents being merely modified reconstructions and combinations
of the old ones, while what staves, as the ballade,' he borrows
from the English lyric school, have a certain similarity to the old
staves, the only difference in the 'ballade' stave being the modern
lilt of the double refrain. Even in the sonnet, of which he left
no fewer than seventy examples, he has a certain non-English
individuality; for while, in some instances, he adopted the sonnet
forms of Tottels Miscellany, he also translated several of
Ronsard's sonnets in the Ronsard form, and wrote a Ronsard
variation. Further, his connection with the old Scottish school
is seen in his use of the old rimed alliterative stave of the
romances in Ane Answer to ane Helandmanis Invective and in
the Flyting between him and Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth.
The most popular of Montgomerie's pieces was, apparently,
The Cherrie and the Slae ; but its popularity had only an indirect
connection with its poetic merits. These are not remarkable and
are not superior to those of The Bankis of Helicon, which is in
the same measure. But, in The Cherrie and the Slae, Montgomerie
does not, as in The Bankis of Helicon, have recourse to aureate
terms or classical imagery. Though somewhat dull and archaic
as an allegory, the piece as regards its language is perfectly simple
and unaffected; in the descriptions of nature there are no attempts
at meretricious ornaments; they represent the fresh and quite
unsophisticated pleasure and admiration of the average person;
while the general drift of the poem is obscure, it is pervaded by
the maxims of that homely and commonplace philosophy, of the
repetition of which the average uneducated person never tires; and,
finally, the quatorzain in which the piece is written, was, with the
peculiar jingle of its wheels, well adapted to catch the popular ear,
although the full capabilities of the stave were only revealed by
Burns in the recitativos of The Jolly Beggars. As a very varied
metrist in what James VI termed 'cuttit and broken verse,'
Montgomerie showed both remarkable ingenuity and a good
musical ear; but he was not a poetic melodist-partly from his
despondent views of life and deficiency in animal spirits, his verses
are, for the most part, lacking in poetic flow. His reflective pieces
are too lowspirited to be effective; his amatory verse is not
animated by much lyrical fervour; and his religious pieces and
6
## p. 137 (#159) ############################################
The last of the “Makaris'
137
versions of psalms, sometimes written to special tunes, while
characterised by apt phrasing and considerable metrical felicity,
do not manifest much fervour or depth of conviction. Yet The
Night is near Gone has the true accent of poetry, and, in several
other pieces, he has poetic moments.
With Montgomerie, the school of the old ‘makaris' properly
ends.
While James VI, who, in 1585, published Essayes of a
Prentise, and, in 1591, Poeticall Exercises, remained in Scotland,
poetry was practised by a few poets under his immediate patronage.
William Fowler translated The Triumphs of Petrarch, and Stewart
of Baldines presented the king with Ane Abbregement of Roland
Furious translated out of Aroist; but both works are preserved
only in manuscript, the one in the Edinburgh university library
and the other in the Advocates' library. In 1590, John Burel wrote a
Descriptioun of the queen’s entry into Edinburgh, and an allegorical
piece The Passage of the Pilgrim, but neither has much merit.
Poetry, except of a religious kind, now came under taboo, and the
religious verse was of a very mediocre character. Alexander
Arbuthnot, principal of Aberdeen university, amused his leisure
hours by cultivating the secular muse, but, as he relates, in secret,
and with fear and trembling, lest ‘with rascal rymours I sall raknit
be. ' On the other hand, Alexander Hume, minister of Logie
and younger brother of the Hume of Montgomerie's Flyting,
sought to substitute 'for prophane sonnets and vain ballads of
love' a series of Hymns and Sacred Songs, in which are dis-
cernible an assimilation in form of Scottish to English verse, and,
equally so, the fatal decay in Scotland of poetic inspiration. In
the succeeding century, the writing of verse, mostly in the English
language and form, was practised by certain of the Scottish
gentry; but, as regards the bulk of the people, secular poetry
remained for nearly two centuries under an ecclesiastical ban.
## p. 138 (#160) ############################################
CHAPTER VII
REFORMATION AND RENASCENCE IN SCOTLAND
In the year 1528, three events occurred in Scotland, which, as
the near future was to prove, were fraught with pregnant conse-
quences alike for the state and for the national religion and
national literature. In that year, James V, after a long tutelage,
became master of his kingdom; Patrick Hamilton, the "proto-
martyr” of the Scottish reformation, was burnt; and Sir David
Lyndsay published his first work, The Dreme. Taken together,
these three events point to the fact that Scotland was entering on
a new phase of her national life, and at the same time indicate the
character of the coming revolution. From the transformation
thus to be wrought in the national aims and ideals the chief
Scottish literature of the period received its distinctive stamp,
and we have but to recall its representative productions—those of
the anonymous authors of The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, of John
Knox and of George Buchanan-to realise the gulf that separates
it from the period immediately preceding.
From James I to Gavin Douglas, Scottish literature had been
mainly imitative, borrowing its spirit, its models and its themes
from Chaucer and other sources. The characteristic aim of this
literature bad, on the whole, been pleasure and amusement; and,
if it touched on evils in the state, in the church or in society, it
had no direct and conscious purpose of assailing the institutions
under which the nation had lived since the beginning of the
Middle Ages. Totally different were the character and aim of the
representative literature of the period which may be dated from
the publication of Lyndsay's Dreme in 1528 to the union of the
crowns in 1603. The literature of this period was in the closest
touch with the national life, and was the direct expression of the
convictions and passions of that section of the nation which was
eventually to control its destinies and to inform the national spirit.
Not pleasure or amusement but strenuous purpose directed to
practical results was the motive and note of this later period; its
## p. 139 (#161) ############################################
The Reformation
in Scotland
139
aim was to reach the heart of the people, and the forms which
it assumed were exclusively determined by the consideration of
this end
Between the years 1520 and 1530, there were already indications
that a crisis was approaching in the national history which would
involve a fundamental change in traditional modes of thought
on all the great questions concerning human life. The problem
which the nation had to face was whether it would abide by its
ancient religion or adopt the teaching of Luther, the writings of
whose followers were finding their way into the country at every
convenient port. But this question involved another of almost
equally far-reaching importance--was France or England to be
Scotland's future ally? Should the old alliance with France be
maintained, the country must hold fast to existing institutions ;
there would be no change of religion and no essential change in
hereditary habits of thought and sentiment. Throughout the
period now opening, these were the great issues that preoccupied
the nation, and it was from the conflict between them that the most
important literary productions of the age received their impulse,
their tone and their characteristic forms.
The literature produced under these conditions was essentially
a reformation literature, and its relation to the movement of
the reformation is its predominating characteristic. Neverthe-
less, though Scotland received her most powerful impulse from the
reformation, the renascence did not leave her wholly untouched,
though conditions peculiar to herself prevented her from deriving
the full benefit of that movement. Her scanty population and
her limited resources were in themselves impediments to the
expansion of the spirit which was the main result of the revival
of learning. The total population of Scotland in the sixteenth
century cannot have been much over 500,000, of whom only
about half used a Teutonic form of speech. Out of such a total
there could be but a small proportion who, by natural aptitude
and by fortunate circumstances, were in a position to profit by the
new current that was quickening the other nations of western
Europe. The poverty of the country, due to the nature of the
soil rather than to any lack of strenuousness on the part of its
people, equally hindered the development of a rich and various
national life. Scotland now possessed three universities ; but to
equip these in accordance with the new ideals of the time was
beyond her resources, and the same difficulty stood in the way of
maintaining great schools such as the renascence had originated
## p. 140 (#162) ############################################
140 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
in other countries. Finally, the renascence was checked in
Scotland, more than in any other country, by the special condi-
tions under which the reformation was here accomplished. From
the beginning to the end of the struggle, the Scottish reformers
had to contend against the consistent opposition of the crown,
and it was only as the result of civil war that the victory of their
cause was at length assured. Thus, at the period when the
renascence was in full tide, Scotland was spending her energies in
a contest which absorbed the best minds of the country; and a
variety of causes debarred her from an adequate participation
in that humanism which, in other countries, was widening the scope
of thought and action, and enriching literature with new forms and
new ideas. Nevertheless, though the renascence failed in any
marked degree to affect the general national life, it found, both
in literature and in action, distinguished representatives who had
fully imbibed its spirit.
It is from the preaching of Patrick Hamilton in 1527,
followed by his execution in 1528, that Knox dates the beginning
of the reformation in Scotland; and it is a production of
Hamilton, Patrikes Places, that he adduces as the first specimen
of its literature. “Literature,' however, this document can hardly
be called, as it is merely a brief and bald statement of the
Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, originally written
in Latin, and translated into Scoto-English by John Frith.
Associated with Hamilton in the beginnings of the Scottish
reformation is a more voluminous writer, Alexander Alane (for
this and not Aless was his real name, as appears from the registers
of the university of St Andrews), but better known by his Latin
designation, Alesius. Born in Edinburgh in 1500, Alesius was
trained for the church in the university of St Andrews. In an
attempt to convince Hamilton of the error of his ways, he was
shaken in his own faith, and suspicions soon arose regarding his
own orthodoxy. A Latin oration delivered against the vices of
the clergy left no room for doubt regarding his religious sym-
pathies, and he was thrown into prison, whence, with the aid of
friends, he escaped to the continent (1532). Alesius never re-
turned to Scotland, but, both in England and Germany, he played
an important part in forwarding the cause of the reformation.
He is the author of at least twenty-eight works, all written
in Latin, partly consisting of commentaries on Scripture, but
mainly of tracts and treatises on the theological controversies
of the time.
Of his controversial writings, three have special
## p. 141 (#163) ############################################
Plnus.
The Gude and Godlie Ballatis 141
reference to religious opinion in Scotland - Epistola contra Decre-
tum quoddam Episcoporum in Scotia, quod prohibet legere Novi
Testamenti Libros lingua vernacula (1533); Responsio ad Cochlaei
Calumnias (1533); and Cohortatio ad Concordiam (1544). The
question discussed in all these productions is the liberty of reading
the Scriptures in the original-a liberty which was first granted by
the Scottish parliament in 1543, and to which Alesius may have
materially contributed. To Alesius, also, we owe the earliest
known description of his native city of Edinburgh, which he
contributed to the Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster (1550).
More interesting for the literary history of the period is Knox's
mention of Kyllour's play, The History of Christ's Passion, to
which reference has already been made? Of Kyllour and his play
we know nothing beyond the casual reference of Knox. It is
matter for greater regret that two plays, mentioned by the church
historian, Calderwood, have not come down to us. The subjects of
the two plays point to the preoccupations of the age—the one being
a tragedy on John the Baptist, a favourite handle for satirical
attacks on the evils of church and state, and the other a comedy on
Dionysius the Tyrant. Scanty as these references are, they lead to
the conclusion that dramatic representations furnished the means
by wbich the champions of the new religion first sought to communi-
cate their teaching to the people. But scenic displays were not the
most effectual vehicles for spreading their tenets throughout the
nation; only a comparatively small public could be reached by them,
and the state had it always in its power to prohibit them, when they
overstepped the limits prescribed by the law. Another form of
literature, therefore, was required, at once less overt and of wider
appeal, if the new teaching was to reach the masses of the people;
and such a vehicle was now to be found.
It was about the year 1546 that there appeared a little volume
which, after the Bible itself, did more for the spread of reforma-
tion doctrines than any other book published in Scotland. As no
copy of this edition has been preserved, we can only conjecture
its contents from the first edition of which we possess a specimen-
that of 1567, apparently an enlarged edition of the original. The
book generally known in Scotland as The Gude and Godlie
Ballatis is, next to Knox's Historie of the reformatioun, the most
memorable literary monument of the period in vernacular Scots.
The chief share in the production of this volume, also known as
The Dundee Book, may, almost with certainty, be assigned to three
brothers, James, John and Robert Wedderburn, sons of a rich
· Ste anie, p. 122.
## p. 142 (#164) ############################################
142 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
1
Dundee merchant, all of whom had studied at the university of
St Andrews, and were for a time exiled for their attachment to the
reformed doctrines. Besides a metrical translation of the Psalms,
the book contained a number of Spirituall Sangis and Plesand
Ballatis, the object of which was to convey instruction in points
of faith, to stimulate devotion and to stigmatise the iniquities and
errors of the Roman church. Of both songs and ballads, fully one
half are more or less close translations from the popular German
productions which had their origin in the Lutheran movement.
But the most remarkable pieces in the book are those which adapt
current secular songs and ballads to spiritual uses, appropriating
the airs, measures, initial lines or choruses of the originals. This
consecration of profane effusions was not unknown in the medieval
church, and for the immediate object in view a more effective
literary form could not have been devised. At a time when books
were dear and were, in general, little read, these Godly Ballads,
set to popular tunes, served at once the purpose of a pamphlet
and a sermon, conveying instruction, while, at the same time,
they roused to battle. What amazes the reader of the present
day in these compositions is the grotesque blending of religion
with all the coarseness and scurrility of the age. Yet this
incongruity is only a proof of the intense conviction of their
authors: in the message they had to proclaim they believed
there was an effectual safeguard against all evil consequences,
and that in the contrast between the flesh and the spirit
the truth would only be made more manifest. Moreover,
there is an accent and a strain in the Ballads which is not to be
found in Lyndsay even in his highest mood. Even when he is
most in earnest, Lyndsay never passes beyond the zeal of the
social reformer. In the Ballads, on the other hand, there is often
present a yearning pathos as of soul speaking to soul, which
transmutes and purifies their coarsest elements, and transfuses
the whole with a spiritual rapture. And the influence that the
Ballads exercised-mainly on the inhabitants of the towns,
which almost universally declared for the reformation-proves
that the writers had not misjudged their readers. For fully half
a century, though unsanctioned by ecclesiastical authority, the
Ballads held their place as the spiritual songs of the reformation
church.
To the year 1548 belongs the first production of John Knox
who was to be at once the chief leader of the Scottish
reformation and its chief literary exponent. The work is
entitled An Epistle to the Congregation of the Castle of St
## p. 143 (#165) ############################################
John Knox. Epistle on Justification 143
Andrews: with a Brief Summary of Balnaves on Justification
by Faith, and, as its author informs us, was written in Rouen,
while he was 'lying in irons and sore troubled by corporall in-
firmitie, in a galley named Nostre Dame. ' Like all the other
works of Knox, it was prompted by an immediate occasion and
was directed to an immediate practical purpose. So closely linked,
indeed, are the six volumes of his writings to his public career,
that they are virtually its running commentary. From first to last
his one concern was to secure the triumph of reformation doctrine,
as he conceived it, and it would be difficult to find a sentence in
his writings which does not bear more or less directly on this
object. To all secular interests, except so far as they touched
religion, he displays the indifference of an apostle; though, like the
reformers of every type, he had a profound conviction, as his
action was notably to prove, that education was the true band-
maid of piety. His eulogy on his countryman, the humanist
George Buchanan, shows that a pictas literata was no less his
ideal than it was that of Melanchthon. "That notable man
Mr George Buchanan,' he writes, 'remains to this day, the year
of
God, 1566 years, to the glory of God, to the great honour of the
nation and to the comfort of them that delight in letters and
virtue. ' A religion based on the Bible, as he understood it, and a
national system of education which should provide for every grade
of study and utilise every special gift for the general well-being-
such were the aims of Knox's public action and the burden of his
testimony in literature,
With one great exception, no productions of Knox possess
more than a historical interest as the expression of his own mind
and temper and of the type of religion of which he was the un-
flinching exponent. Mainly controversial in character, neither by
their literary quality nor by their substance were they found of
permanent value even by those to whom they made special appeal.
The long list of his writings, which had begun with The Epistle on
Justification, was continued in England, where, for five years, we
find him acting as an officially commissioned preacher of the
reformation as it was sanctioned by the government of Edward VI.
The titles of the pieces which he threw off during this period
sufficiently indicate their nature and scope: A Vindication of
the Doctrine that the Sacrifice of the Mass is Idolatry (1550),
A Summary according to the Holy Scriptures of the Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper (1550), A Declaration of the True Nature
and Object of Prayer (1553) and The Exposition upon the Sixth
a
## p. 144 (#166) ############################################
144 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
Psalm of David (1554). The accession of Mary Tudor in July,
1553, made England an impossible place for protestants like
Knox, and his next five years, with the exception of a brief visit
to Scotland, were spent on the continent, mainly in Geneva, where
Calvin had already established his supremacy.
Knox's exile on the continent gave occasion to another series
of productions, all prompted by some pressing question of the
moment. The protestants in England had to be comforted and
encouraged during their trying experiences under the government
of Mary Tudor, and this end he sought to accomplish in his Two
comfortable Epistles to his afflicted Brethren in England (1554)
and in his Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God's Truth
in England (1554)—the latter of which, however, by its ill-timed
attack on the existing authorities in England, did not improve the
position of those for whose good it was intended. In 1554, Knox
was appointed to the charge of a congregation of English exiles
in Frankfort-on-the-Main, but, within a year, there arose such
a storm of controversy on points of doctrine and ceremonies
that he was fain to demit his charge and retire to Geneva. In
his Narrative of the Proceedings and Troubles of the English
Congregation at Frankfurt on the Maine, 1554–5, Knox gave
his story of the controversy, the historical interest of which is
that out of it grew the two parties which were eventually to
divide the Church of England—the party of puritanism (of which
Knox is to be regarded as one of the chief founders), and the party
which accepted Elizabeth's policy of compromise.
The condition of the protestants in Scotland under the regency
of Mary of Lorraine evoked another series of long epistles, the
burden of which was an arraignment of the policy of the govern-
ment and an exhortation to the faithful to look confidently for-
ward to a day fast coming when the true religion would prevail.
From 1555 to 1559, with the exception of a visit to Scotland
during part of the years 1555 and 1556, Knox made his home in
Geneva, where he acted, for a time, as co-pastor to a congregation
of English exiles, more in harmony with his own opinions than
that of Frankfort. His passionate desire, however, was to preach
his
gospel in England and Scotland, but this desire he saw thwarted
by the two female rulers who now governed these countries. It
was out of the indignation of his baffled hopes, therefore, that,
in 1558, he published his First Blast of the Trumpet against the
Monstruous Regiment of Women, which of all his works had the
widest notoriety in his own day. From the classical writers, the
## p. 145 (#167) ############################################
John Knox.
Pamphlets
145
Roman law, the Bible and the Fathers, he supports the argument
for which he vehemently contends—that 'to promote a Woman to
beare rule, superioritie, dominion, or empire above any Realme,
Nation or Citie is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, a
thing most contrarious to his reveled will and approved ordinance. '
In his main contention, Knox was at one with the most influential
writers of the sixteenth century, Jean Bodin among others, but,
even by divines of his own way of thinking, his pamphlet was
generally regarded as a hasty and ill-considered performance. In
1559, it was answered by John Aylmer, one of the Marian exiles,
subsequently bishop of London, in his Harborowe for Faithfull
and Trewe Subjectes agaynst the late blowne Blaste concerning the
Government of Women, in which the most effective point made is
that, as a limited monarchy, England is specially guarded from
the drawbacks incident to female sovereignty. But the course of
public events proved to be the most stringent commentary on the
contention of the Blast. At the close of the very year of its
publication Mary Tudor died and the protestant Elizabeth suc-
ceeded to the throne of Englandan event which Knox was bound
to recognise as the happiest dispensation for the welfare of his
own cause.
While still in Geneva, Knox produced another work, of less
resounding notoriety than the Blast, but a more solid and careful
performance. This was his Answer to a great Nomber of
blasphemous cavillations written by an Anabaptist and adver-
sarie to God's eternal Predestination. Like all his more important
works, it was prompted by the circumstances of the moment. The
dogma of predestination was the foundation of the theological
system of Calvin, to whom Knox looked as his spiritual father, but
the doctrine had been impugned by many, and notably by Sebastian
Castalio, who had been expelled from Geneva for the general
heterodoxy of his opinions. From the protestants in England,
also, there came a request to their brethren in Geneva that they
would prepare a reply to a book which had recently been written
against the same dogma, and to Knox was assigned the task. The
result was his lengthy treatise on predestination which fills one
volume of the six that comprise his published works. It is
Knox's most elaborate effort in constructive theology, but,
strenuous and dexterous though he is in meeting the arguments
of his adversary, he possessed neither the self-control nor the
systematising genius which made his master, Calvin, the law-
giver of reformed doctrine. It is to Calvin's Institutes of the
2
L. L. III.
CH. VII.
10
## p. 146 (#168) ############################################
146 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
Christian Religion, and not to Knox's treatise, that the followers
of both must have recourse for the magistral statement of the
constitutive dogma of their theological system.
The triumph of the reforming party in Scotland in 1559 at
length restored Knox to his native country, where his presence
was to be the dominating fact in the political and religious
situation, and where he was to produce the work which is the
great literary monument of the time. As the immediate result of
the victory of protestantism, appeared the First Book of Discipline,
of which Knox was not, indeed, the sole author, but which bears
his imprint on every page, and is the brief summary of his ideals
in religion and education. Here, as directly connected with the
literary history of Scotland, we are only concerned with the scheme
of national instruction which the book sets forth with detailed
precision. In every parish there was to be a school and in
every important town a college, from which the aptest scholars
were to be sent to the three universities-attendance in all three
grades being exacted by state and church. The poverty of the
country and protracted civil commotions prevented the scheme
from being realised; but an ideal had been set forth which never
passed out of sight, and, during successive centuries, the parish
schools of Scotland were the nursing homes of her most vigorous
intellectual life.
Like all his other works, Knox's Historie of the reformatioun
in Scotland was suggested by an immediate occasion and was
written to serve a special purpose. Its express aim was to justify
the proceedings of the protestant leaders who had been the chief
instruments in overthrowing the ancient religion, and it was at
their desire that he undertook the task. His book, therefore, is
essentially that of an apologist and not of a historian; and he
makes no disguise of the fact. That right and justice were all on
one side and that those who opposed the reformation were blinded
either by folly or iniquity, is his unflinching contention from the
first sentence to the last. So transparent is this assumption, how-
ever, that it hardly misleads the reader; and through what he
may consider the perversion of characters and events he cannot
fail to discern their salient and essential traits. Thus, in the most
remarkable parts of Knox's book, his interviews with queen Mary,
the weak points in his own cause and in his own personal character
are as manifest as those of his adversary. The History consists of
five books, the last of which, however, is so inferior in vigour to
the others that its materials must have been put together by
## p. 147 (#169) ############################################
Historie of the reformatioun in Scotland 147
another hand. It is in the first book, which traces the beginning
and progress of the reformation in Scotland, that Knox displays
his most striking gifts as a writer—such passages as those describ-
ing the rout of Solway Moss, the mission and death of George
Wishart and the battle of Pinkie being the nearest anticipation of
Carlyle to be found in English literature. In the second and
third books, we have one of the earliest examples of an appeal to
historical documents as vouchers for the truth of the narrative :
fully three-fourths of these books consisting of papers supplied by
the leaders of the reformation in Scotland and England. But it
is the fourth book that has made the most vivid impression on
the national memory, and may be said to have created the preva-
lent conception of the Scottish reformation. · The theme of this
book is the return of Mary to Scotland, and the compromise that
followed between her and the reforming leaders. Here we have
the reports of the dramatic interviews between Mary and Knox,
and of his fulminations from the pulpit in the church of St Giles,
and here, also, those characterisations of Mary and other leading
personages which are written for all time. What Sainte-Beuve
said of the Memoirs of Saint-Simon may be said with even greater
truth of Knox's History: the periods before and after that which
he describes are dim and obscure by comparison. And it is a
further tribute to the literary interest and importance of the book,
that it is the first original work in prose which Scotland had yet
produced. There had been translations and compilations in prose,
but there had not, as yet, been any work which bore the stamp of
individual genius and which might serve as a model for Knox's
undertaking. In this fact, and in his long residence in England and
association with Englishmen abroad, we have the explanation of
the diction—the anglicised Scots—which was made a reproach to
a
him by his Catholic adversaries.
Knox's History is the chief literary monument of the Scottish
reformation ; but to the same period belong a number of works,
more or less of a historical character, which prove that prose had
now become an accredited vehicle of expression as well as verse.
Next in literary quality to the work of Knox is The Historie and
Cronicles of Scotland by Robert Lindesay of Pitscottie-one
of the few productions of the time which can be read with
interest at the present day. Lindesay was an ardent protestant,
and, in the parts of his History where he deals with the
change of the national religion, he is a thoroughgoing partisan.
With religion, however, he is not primarily concerned, and his aim
1042
## p. 148 (#170) ############################################
148 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
is not controversial like that of Knox. What mainly interested
him in the past were picturesque episodes illustrating the manners
of the times and the characters of the leading actors; and it is to
him that we owe some of the most lively pictures in the national
history. As his easy credulity as well as the structure of his book
shows, Lindesay had no very severe criterion of historic accuracy.
His account of the reign of James II (1436—60), with which his
History begins, is merely a translation of Hector Boece's Latin
History of Scotland—a work of inventive imagination in which
the wildest fables are recorded as ascertained facts. From 1542
onwards, he drew upon his own observation or on the testimony of
eye-witnesses ; but it is precisely in this portion of his work that
he exhibits in least degree that gift of vivid narrative which made
him the delight of Sir Walter Scott as the nearest approach to a
Scottish Froissart.
Of a different order is the work of Sir James Melville of
Halbill, who, first as page to queen Mary and, afterwards, as
her ambassador, played a subordinate part in the transactions
of his time. His Memoirs, in which he records his own
observations of what he had seen and heard in the course of
his public life, still retain their value as one of the historical
sources for the period. Though a protestant in religion, he
possessed the confidence of Mary; and his sympathies are with
her and not with her rival, Elizabeth. Melville's point of view
is that of the courtier and the diplomatist, and in his decorous
and sober pages there is little indication of the seething
passions of the time. In the Memorials of Transactions in
Scotland (1569–73) of Richard Bannatyne, Knox's secretary,
we have another example of the stimulus given to historical
narrative by the events of the reformation. In the form of
a diary, Bannatyne records the events that he saw passing
before his eyes in those momentous years when the victory of
protestantism was definitely assured by the surrender of Edinburgh
Castle by the last champions of Mary. But the most memorable
passages in the book are those which record the last days of his
master, from whose hand there are some entries written in the
most vigorous style of his History. Another example of the general
interest in contemporary events is the Diary of Mr James Meb-
ville, Minister of Kilrenny in Fife (1566—1601). Of the nature
of an autobiography rather than of a diary, this is one of the most
delightful books of the kind in the language. In the author him-
self, we have the most attractive type of the Presbyterian pastor,
## p. 149 (#171) ############################################
Historians of the Period. Political Ballads 149
and his account of his home life and of his education at school and
university is of high value as a picture of the life of the time. As
a specimen of the Scottish language of the period, and as one
of the best known passages in early Scottish literature, his descrip-
tion of Knox preaching at St Andrews in his last days may hardly
be passed over:
I saw him everie day go hulie and fear (slowly and warily) with a furring
of martricks (martens) about his neck, a staff in the an hand, and guid godly
Richart Ballanden (Bannatyne] his servand, holdin upe the other oxter (arm-
pit) from the Abbaye to the paroche Kirk, and be the said Richart and
another servent lifted upe to the pulpit, whar he behovit to lean at his first
entrie; bot or he haid done with his sermont he was sa active and vigorus,
that he was lyk to ding that pulpit in blads (break the pulpit in pieces) and
Alie out of it.
A few other works, also of the nature of annals, though not
attaining to the dignity of literature, may be noted as illustrating
the interest in history which had been mainly occasioned by the
revolutionary events of the period. The Diurnal of remarkable
Occurents, a work by different hands, notes events from the time
of James V till the year 1575; the period from 1566 to 1596 is
dealt with in The Historie and Life of James the Seat, briefly
continued till 1617; and, further, we have the Memoirs of the
Affairs of Scotland (1577—1603) by David Moysie, and the Diary
of Robert Birrel (1532–1605).
The cultivation of prose was the most important literary result
of the reformation, but it did not check the tendency to versify-
ing which had been assiduously practised throughout the reigns
of the Jameses. In verse, however, there was produced no work
comparable to Knox's History in. prose. However we may explain
the fact, from the reformation dates a period of barrenness in
imaginative literature, similar to that which in England followed
the death of Chaucer, and it lasted to the poetic revival in the
beginning of the eighteenth century. With few exceptions, the
verse written during the reformation struggle was prompted by
the occasion of the hour-its principal themes being the sensational
events on which the destinies of the nation appeared to hang,
Printed in black letter on one side of a leaf of paper, ballads of
this character issued in a constant stream from the press of Robert
Lekprevik, the Edinburgh printer. Almost all of them were
written by supporters of the reformation, and are mainly coarse
and virulent attacks on Mary and such conspicuous persons as
were known to be her friends.
The principal authors to whom the ballads have been ascribed
are Robert Sempill, Sir John Maitland of Thirlstane, the Rev.
## p. 150 (#172) ############################################
150 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
John Davidson and Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange. Of Sempill,
the most prolific writer of his class, little is known beyond
the fact that he was an ardent supporter of the reformation
and an uncompromising enemy of queen Mary, and that he
lived in the thick of the sensational events of his time. His two
best pieces are the Sege of the Castel of Edinburgh and The
Legend of a Lymaris Lyfe, the coarse vigour of which sufficiently
explains his temporary popularity; but in none of his work does
Sempill rise to the dignity of poetic satire which ensures per-
manent literary interest. Sir John Maitland-better known in
political than in literary history as the framer of the act of 1592
which has been called the Magna Charta of the Church of Scotland
-strikes a higher note than Sempill. In the three poems that
have been attributed to him, Ane Admonition to my Lord
Regentis Grace, Ane Schort Invectyve aganis the Delyverance
of the Erle of Northumberland, and Aganis Sklanderous Tungis,
there is a restraint, a good sense and dignity, which became one
who filled successively the offices of a senator of the College of
Justice, of secretary of state and of lord high chancellor of
Scotland. To Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange only one piece
is assigned-Ane Ballat of the Captane of the Castell—that is,
of Edinburgh, the last stronghold held for queen Mary, of
which Kirkcaldy himself was the captain. Of little poetic
merit, this ballad has at least the distinction of being one of the
few in which loyalty to Mary is expressed with chivalrous and
heartfelt devotion-a devotion which he expiated with his life on
the capture of the castle in 1573. The reformation in Scotland
had no more strenuous adherent than the Rev. John Davidson,
and, as he lived till 1603, his uncompromising opinions brought
him into frequent trouble with James VI in his policy of suppress-
ing presbyterianism and introducing episcopacy. A personal friend
and admiring disciple of Knox, Davidson has extolled his virtues
and, at the same time, sketched the main events of his career in
Ane Brief Commendation of Uprichtness-a valuable document
for Knox's biographers. To the eulogy of Knox is also devoted
a second of the three poems known to be the work of Davidson-
Ane Schort Discurs of the Estaitis quha hes caus to deploir the
Deith of this excellent Servand of God, the closing lines of which
may be quoted as a specimen of the general level of his style:
Lyke as himself is unto gloir,
So sall all ages ay recyte
Johne Knoxis Name with greit decoir.
## p. 151 (#173) ############################################
Roman Catholic Writers. John Major 151
The writers who have been mentioned all belonged to the
reforming party, but, throughout the whole period, the ancient
church had also its representatives in literature, one of whom, at
least, had a European reputation in his own day. This was John
,
Mair or Major, who has been called 'the last of the schoolmen,'
and who is the one eminent thinker whom we can with certainty
say that Scotland gave to scholasticism. Born in Haddington-
shire in 1479, and dying in 1549 or 1550, Major lived to see the
beginnings of the reformation in Scotland, but, though in many
respects a liberal thinker both in religion and politics, he continued
to the end a steady adherent of the communion in which he was
a
reared. After a year's study (1493) at the university of Cambridge,
Major passed to the university of Paris, where, till 1518, with the
exception of a brief visit to Scotland, he was successively student,
regent in arts, and doctor in theology. From 1518 to 1525, he
lectured on logic and theology, first in the university of Glasgow
and afterwards in the university of St Andrews, where he had
George Buchanan as one of his pupils. Between 1525 and 1531,
he was again in Paris, where he was now regarded by all the
learned world as the most distinguished champion of medievalism
in its opposition to the new studies. He had attained this repu-
tation through the long series of his publications, begun in 1503,
of which the most notable was his Commentary on the Four
Books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1509). In all these
works, Major is the schoolman pure and simple; the subjects he
treats, his manner of handling them, are those of the medieval
logician when scholasticism had become an exhausted movement.
For the men of the new order, therefore, Major was an obscu-
rantist against whom ridicule was the only appropriate weapon.
Melanchthon selected him as the special object of attack in his
reply to the condemnation of Luther by the Sorbonne. 'I have
seen John Major's Commentaries on Peter Lombard,' he writes;
‘he is now, I am told, the prince of the Paris divines. Good
heavens! What wagon-loads of trifling. . . . If he is a specimen of
the Parisian, no wonder they have so little stomach for Luther. '
A shaft was aimed at Major by a still greater hand; in the
wonderful library of St Victor in Paris, Pantagruel found a book
entitled The Art of Making Puddings by John Major. Despite
the mockery of the humanists, however, there are ideas and
suggestions to be found in his voluminous disquisitions which
prove that he was a shrewd and independent thinker when he
addressed himself to practical questions. No reformer saw more
## p. 152 (#174) ############################################
152 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
clearly or denounced more stringently the corruptions and abuses
of the church as it existed in Scotland; he held as liberal opinions
as his pupil Buchanan regarding the relations of rulers and
subjects; and a suggestion which he threw out as to the most
effective method of dealing with mendicancy was adopted with
fruitful results in Germany and the Low Countries. But his good
sense and independent judgment are best exemplified in his one
book which is not a scholastic treatise—his Historia Majoris
Britanniae tam Angliae quam Scotiae. The Latin in which the
History is written shows no trace of the influence of the revival
of letters; it is the Latin of the schoolmen, impure, inharmonious
and difficult. On the other hand, Major as a historian stands on
a far higher level than that of the medieval chronicler. His work
bears no evidence of great research, but he carefully selects the
significant facts that were accessible to him, and judges men and
events, if not with philosophic grasp, yet with a genial shrewdness
which gives piquancy to his narrative. In six books he relates the
history of the two countries from the earliest times till the reigns
of Henry VII and James IV. What is noteworthy in his narrative
is his rejection of the legendary origins of Scotland which had
been invented to rebut the English claims of paramountcy, and
which continued to be retailed by Scottish historians into the
eighteenth century. But the most signal illustration of Major's
insight and originality is his attitude regarding the political
relations of the two kingdoms whose histories he relates. Almost
alone among his countrymen, and at a period when the hereditary
animosities of England and Scotland were never more intense, he
counselled political union as the natural consummation of their
respective destinies and in the best interest of both peoples.
One of the most notable specimens of the vernacular prose of
the period is the singular production entitled The Complaynt of
Scotland, the anonymous author of which was an adherent of the
ancient church, and an ardent opponent of the English alliance.
Primarily a political pamphlet, it was prompted by the miseries of
the country that followed the defeat of the Scots at Pinkie by the
duke of Somerset in 1547; and the object of its author is to point
out to his countrymen the various evils to which their misfortunes
were due. Till within recent years, the Complaynt was regarded
as an original work, but it is now known to be, in great part, an
adaptation of Le Quadrilogue Invectif of Alain Chartier (1422).
The object of Chartier's work was to encourage his countrymen
in their effort to expel the English, and, as the same situation now
.
## p. 153 (#175) ############################################
153
The Complaynt of Scotland
existed in Scotland, the author of the Complaynt found material
in Chartier ready to his hand. After an introduction, consisting
of an epistle to queen Mary and an epistle to the reader, the book
opens with a succession of chapters (the first mainly a translation
of Chartier), in which the author discourses on such themes as the
‘mutations of monarches,' the wrath of God against wicked
peoples, and the approaching end of the world-all with more or
less direct bearing on the miseries of Scotland. In chapter VI,
we have what the author calls 'ane monologue recreative,' in
which, with curious irrelevancy, a shepherd is made to expound
the Ptolemaic system. Then follows what is to be considered the
main portion of the book-the vision of Dame Scotia and her
indictment of the iniquities of nobles, clergy and commons, which
have pro ced the existing miseries of their country. Here, again,
the author is indebted to Chartier, from whom he has appropriated
the conception of the vision, besides certain portions of his text.
Such is the general plan of this fantastic production, which may
have been drawn from other sources not yet discovered. Regarded
merely as a specimen of early Scottish prose, however, the book
has an interest of its own. The author himself assures us that he
uses the domestic scottis language'-a statement which he
modifies by the further remark that he found it necessary 'til myxt
oure langage vitht part of termis dreuyn [derived] fra Lateen. '
Another source of interest in the book is the multitude of curious
details regarding the life of the time which are not to be found
elsewhere. Of its author nothing is known, though he has been
variously identified with Sir James Inglis, abbot of Cambuskenneth,
Sir James Inglis, abbot of Culross, Sir David Lyndsay and one of
the three Wedderburns. From the book itself, we gather that he
was a Catholic and an enemy of England; and the recent discovery
that he had read a manuscript of Octavien St Gelais, bishop of
Angoulême, suggests that he may have been in the suite of queen
Mary in France, and strengthens the conjecture that the work was
printed in Paris in 1548 or 1549.
A notable volume was archbishop Hamilton's Catechism
(1552), so called because it was issued by his authority after
receiving the sanction of a provincial council. Written in the
purest Scots of the time, the Catechism presents the fundamental
Catholic doctrines in the simplest and most attractive form,
though in the tumultuous period that followed its publication
it had little influence in turthering the cause of its promoters.
The most eminent defender of the old church was Quintin
## p. 154 (#176) ############################################
154 Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
!
Kennedy, a son of the second earl of Cassillis, who, in 1558,
published The Compendius Tractive, which stated the case
against protestantism with such persuasiveness and ability that,
by the admission of an opponent, it perceptibly affected the
progress of the new opinions. Better known than his Tractive,
however, is the Ressoning between him and Knox: the record of
an oral controversy that took place at May bole in 1562, and lasted
for three days.
A larger amount of work was produced by Ninian Winzet,
another Catholic controversialist, who, in his Certain Tractatis
for Reformatioun of Doctryne and Manneris (1562) frankly
admitted the corruptions of the Catholic church in Scotland,
but contended that they afforded no rational ground for changing
the national religion. It is noteworthy in Winzet and other
Roman Catholic writers of the time that they claimed to be
the upholders of the national tradition not only in religion but in
policy. In the alliance with England, but for whose intervention
the reformation in Scotland would not have been accomplished,
they saw the ruin of their country; and all things English were
the objects of their special detestation. For this reason it was
that they resented the intrusion of English words into the Scottish
vocabulary, and regarded it as a patriotic duty to write in what
they considered the purest Scots. In a well known sentence,
Winzet caustically upbraids Knox (who, in point of fact, wrote for
England as well as for Scotland) for his use of English modes of
expression. 'Gif you,' he writes, “throw curiositie of novations
has forget our auld plane Scottis quhilk your mother lerit you :
in tymes cuming I sall write to you my mynd in Latin ; for I am
not acquynted with your Southeroun. '
The highest place among the Catholic writers of the period un-
doubtedly belongs to John Leslie, bishop of Ross, the friend, adviser
and most distinguished champion of Mary, whom he attended during
her imprisonment in England.
