Knox, John, approximately 1514-1572; Reformation -- Scotland
July found Knox and his family at St. Andrews, in the New Hospice, a pre-
Reformation ecclesiastical building, west of the Cathedral, and adjoining
the gardens of St. Leonard's College. At this time James Melville,
brother of the more celebrated scholar and divine, Andrew Melville, was a
golf-playing young student of St. Leonard's College. He tells us how
Knox would walk about the College gardens, exhorting the St. Leonard's
lads to be staunch Protestants; for St. Salvator's and St. Mary's were
not devoted to the Reformer and his party. The smitten preacher (he had
suffered a touch of apoplexy) walked slowly, a fur tippet round his neck
in summer, leaning on his staff, and on the shoulder of his secretary,
Bannatyne. He returned, at St. Andrews, in his sermons, to the Book of
Daniel with which, nearly a quarter of a century ago, he began his pulpit
career. In preaching he was moderate--for half-an-hour; and then,
warming to his work, he made young Melville shudder and tremble, till he
could not hold his pen to write. No doubt the prophet was denouncing
"that last Beast," the Pope, and his allies in Scotland, as he had done
these many years ago. Ere he had finished his sermon "he was like to
ding the pulpit to blads and fly out of it." He attended a play, written
by Davidson, later a famous preacher, on the siege and fall of the
Castle, exhibiting the hanging of his old ally, Kirkcaldy, "according to
Mr. Knox's doctrine," says Melville. This cheerful entertainment was
presented at the marriage of John Colville, destined to be a traitor, a
double spy, and a renegade from the Kirk to "the Synagogue of Satan."
{267a}
Knox now collected historical materials from Alexander Hay, Clerk of the
Privy Council, and heard of the publication of Buchanan's scurrilous
"Detection" of Queen Mary, in December 1571. {267b}
Knox had denounced the Hamiltons as murderers, so one of that name
accused our Reformer of having signed a band for the murder of
Darnley--not the murder at Kirk o' Field, but a sketch for an attempt at
Perth! He had an interview with Knox, not of the most satisfactory, and
there was a quarrel with another Hamilton, who later became a Catholic
and published scurrilous falsehoods about Knox, in Latin. In fact our
Reformer had quarrels enough on his hands at St. Andrews, and to one
adversary he writes about what he would do, if he had his old strength of
body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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