History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution — Volume 2MacCaffrey, James
Religion
History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution — Volume 2
MacCaffrey, James
Catholic Church -- History -- Modern period, 1500-
The successful invasion of Scotland by the English troops had turned
the scales in favour of the lords of the Congregation. They were now
masters in Scotland, but, had the bishops and clergy been zealous men
worthy of their sacred office, the cause of the old Church in Scotland
would not have been even then hopeless. While Knox and his friends
were straining every nerve to consolidate their work by the
appointment of preachers and superintendents for the rising
congregation, many of the Catholic bishops and abbots, several of whom
were allied by blood and friendship with the lay lords, either
contented themselves with doing nothing, or went over to the enemies
of the Church for the sake of securing for themselves and their
descendants the ecclesiastical property that they administered. The
Archbishop of St. Andrew's and Primate of Scotland was the brother of
the Earl of Arran. Though a convinced Catholic himself, he was not the
man either to make a struggle or to inspire confidence at such a
crisis. Archbishop Beaton of Glasgow had fled already from the
kingdom; the Bishop of Argyll, another illegitimate scion of the house
of Hamilton, was a Protestant or was soon to become one; Adam
Bothwell,[19] whom the Pope had appointed the previous year to the See
of Orkney on the petition of the king and queen of Scotland, could not
be trusted, as his subsequent conduct showed; Alexander Gordon, who
claimed to be Bishop of Galloway, though he was never consecrated, had
gone over openly to the enemies of the Church, as had also the
provincial of the Dominicans, the sub-prior of the chapter of St.
Andrew's, and John Rowe a former agent of the Scottish bishops at the
Roman Court. With men such as these to guard the interests of
Catholicism in Scotland there could be little doubt about the result.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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