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Parisian summer, it was thought they might safely sail
homewards, and the port of Leith was made on the 19th of
the month. Great was the enthusiastic joy of the young
Queen's new country-people, and her own first act was to
kneel down and kiss the Scottish earth, as she thanked
Him who had brought her and her husband safely through
the seas.
There were triumphant rejoicings in Edinburgh;
but the east winds, which throughout spring and early
summer rage round that city, smote the poor Magdalene
to the death, and, hurrying on the last stage of her disease,
on the 10th of July, forty days after her arrival at Leith,
and within forty days of the completion of her seven-
teenth year, her fragile body was laid in the royal vault of
Holyrood. When a child she had been used to say that she
would be a queen, and to her 'a fearful thing' had proved
'the granted wish.' 'This young queen,' says Pitscottie,
'brought ane infinite substance . . . with her. Cloth of
gold, velvet, and satins, and jewels, for herself and 'her
Maries,' and these, with the other profuse gifts of her father,
'the restorer of letters and of the arts,' had doubtless done
their own work in opening up a modern world at the court
of old Holyrood.

Negotiations were immediately begun for the King's second marriage, and Marie, widow of the Duke of Longueville, and daughter of Claud of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, a princess of rare genius and beauty, was chosen. In June 1538 she landed in Fife, and the wedding took place in the cathedral of St. Andrews. The court remained at the archiepiscopal city for more than a month after, and there were great festivities. Marie of Lorraine said to the King, 'It was showin her in France that Scotland was but ane barbarous countrie, desolat of all pleasant commodities; but now she saw the contrair. Also, she said she never saw more fair personages of men and women as she had seen

that day in little boundis. At thir wordis, the king was greatlie rejoiced, and said to her, “Forsooth, madame, ye sall see better or ye goe." "'1 By James v.'s marriages the French element in this country prevailed perhaps more than it had ever done before. Master masons were brought over from France by the King, and they have left the traces of their art at Linlithgow, Falkland, and Stirling. 'Nor was it in building only that French taste showed its influence in Scotland. Frenchmen were employed to lay out gardens; we gave work to French wrights, to French smiths, to French plasterers; we welcomed French fashions at our tables, in our dress, in our manners; French words made their way into our speech; French leeches dressed our wounds; French dances were to be seen at our country fairs and on our village greens.' Yet early in this reign English diplomacy had been hard at work to terminate the French league by bringing about a treaty of enduring peace with Scotland. In 1515, Archbishop Stuart was succeeded by Andrew Forman, a very able man. His successor was James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow. This prelate was a notable politician, and, shut up in his castle of St. Andrews, he proved more than a match for the intrigues of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey. In 1524-25 Henry's emissary to Scotland was Magnus, a priest. The unfortunate Englishman found himself so detested, that, as he walked through the streets of Edinburgh, the women 'banned, cursed, and wirried' him, and he entreated to be allowed to leave 'that cumbrous country, where ever was confusion without trust, disdain, slander, malice, and cruelty, without virtue, or dread of God or man.'

2

1 Pitscottie, vol. ii. p. 377.

2 Preface to the Inventories of the Jewels of Queen Mary, by Joseph Robertson, pp. lxii. lxiii.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE PROGRESS OF THE NEW OPINIONS.

'But Thou hast made it sure,

By Thy dear promise to Thy Church and Bride,
That Thou, on earth, wouldst aye with her endure,
Till earth to Heaven be purified.'

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The Christian Year.

IN 1535 an Act was passed against heretics, and in 1540 we find the root of the matter attacked by an Act 'for reforming of kirks and kirkmen,' where it is confessed that 'the negligence of divine service, the unhonesty and misrule of kirkmen, both in wit, knowledge, and manners, are the ... cause that the kirk and kirkmen are slighted and contemned; for remedy thereof the King's grace prays all archbishops, bishops, . . . and every kirkman ... to reform themselves. . . in habits and manners to God and man.' A comparatively lively trade was now carried on between the Continent and Leith, Dundee, and Montrose. To these ports there were brought copies of Tyndale's translation of the Holy Scriptures, and many Lutheran books. The smitten persons in the district subscribed for a Bible, and at the dead hour of night the neighbours were invited to come quietly to the house of the most zealous family. There the carefully-hidden Bible was produced, and one read aloud, either the Old Testament, full of engrossing history and glowing imagery, or the Great History of the

New, known perhaps to many through another medium, but full of a fresh and thrilling interest now in its familiar language. Doubtless among the company there were certain in hearty earnest, who believed that in the darkness to them the light had been specially vouchsafed; but how many may have been secretly guided by pride and self-will, as they put on tremendous mysteries their own fond interpretations, and to how many women and young persons the secrecy and excitement of these midnight meetings were their chief fascinations! An Act was passed prohibiting private conventions to dispute on the Scriptures. Of Archbishop James Beaton, the friend and revered counsellor of James V., Spottiswoode says:-' He was not much solicitous (as it was thought) how matters went in the Church.” Heretics were nevertheless burnt with sedulous energy during his primacy; but as a cure for heresy these executions were such failures that one of the Archbishop's friends recommended him, if he burned any more heretics, to burn them in cellars, for the smoke of Patrick Hamilton infected all on whom it blew.2 Between 1533 and 1540 Henry Forrest, David Straton, Norman Gourlay, Kennedy, and Jerome Russell, and a number of others, suffered death at the stake on charges of heresy. These fearful punishments were administered under the most exciting circumstances. The condemned was tied to the stake in the midst of a vast multitude of spectators, while priests, pressing as near him as safety would admit, told him there was still time for recantation, and exhorted him, as he valued his eternal salvation, to abjure his accursed errors; while he, on his part, with sincere charity, forgave his persecutors, or answered back sarcastically, or with the sublime courage of a martyr rapturously hailed the flames that were to make his

1 Spottiswoode, p. 130.

2 Knox, p. 15.

2

passage quicker to heaven, called on the Most High to avenge his death, quoted text upon text of the Scriptures, that told powerfully on the people, or uttered ecstatic foretellings in his agony, long to be remembered as the last words of a prophet. No wonder if the witnesses of such scenes spent the rest of their lives in inquiring what it was these men had died for. A spirit of inquiry was spreading fast, and several priests and friars began to preach, first cautiously, and then with gradually increasing courage, against the 'pride and idle life of bishops.' 1 A certain Friar Airth preached a bold sermon on these subjects in Dundee, and though the Bishop of Brechin 'buffeted the Friar and called him heretic,' he preached the same sermon at St. Andrews, and so impossible did he find it to be silent on the Church's scandals, that he was advised by his brethren to flee to England; they 'fearing to lose the benedictions of the bishops,' 'to wit,' says Knox, with his biting rancour, which is nevertheless sometimes spiced with truth, 'their malt and their meal.'3 Many persons recanted, and many fled the country, and pre-eminent among those who, like Airth, represented a reforming movement within the Church were Winram, SubPrior of St. Andrews; Mair, Provost of St. Salvator's; Gavin Logie, Principal of St. Leonard's College, who held such decided Lutheran opinions that it used to be said of those who embraced them that they had drunk of St. Leonard's Well; and Alexander Seaton, the King's confessor. James V. resisted all the recommendations of Henry VIII. to begin a Reformation in Scotland on the plan that he was carrying out in England. Yet he was a bad type of a Catholic Prince he trafficked in ecclesiastical patronage, and, as we have seen, bestowed four rich abbacies on his illegitimate His uncle sent Sir Ralph Sadler to the Court of

sons.

1 Knox, p. 14.

2 Ibid.

& Ibid. p. 15.

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