JOHN Knox and George Buchanan were contemporaries and knew one another well, but they were very different men, very different Protestants, and very different writers. Both studied under John Mair at St Andrews in the 1520s, but thereafter, their paths diverged. Knox was ordained as a priest, but turned against the Catholic faith in the 1540s and spent the next twenty years moving in Protestant circles in Scotland, England, France, Germany, and Switzerland, including almost two years spent as a galley slave following the French capture of St Andrews Castle in 1547. He returned to Scotland in the summer of 1559 hoping to advance the cause of Reformation, and his sermon in Perth, which provoked an iconoclastic riot, is indicative of the mark he made. With the Reformation achieved in the summer of 1560, Knox was significant in systematizing the message of the Protestant Kirk as co-author of the Confession of Faith and the First Book of Discipline, and thereafter, he acted, as minister at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, as a key mouthpiece of Protestantism.
Buchanan, in contrast, although he flirted with Protestantism as early as the 1530s, spent the early part of his career travelling extensively in Catholic Europe, in France, Portugal (where he again faced accusations of heresy and was imprisoned by the Inquisition), and Italy. By the time of his return to Scotland after the Reformation, and already a prolific author of poetry and drama, Buchanan had become a Protestant. He spent the years after 1561 at the court of Mary Queen of Scots as her occasional tutor, before the murder of her second husband Darnley and her swift marriage to the Earl of Bothwell turned him against her. He went on to serve as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1567, the summer in which Mary was deposed, and thereafter, he actively sought to destroy her reputation and prevent her restoration to the Scottish throne.
Both Knox and Buchanan were prolific authors of prose, and what follows will consider the variety of forms and purposes to which they turned their pens. Political and controversial works, often published in the heat of national and dynastic dramas, helped to shape the radical reputations that would come to mark John Knox and George Buchanan as major voices of the Scottish Reformation. Among these are Knox’s First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, his strident denunciation of female rule of 1558; Buchanan’s Ane Detectioun of the duinges of Marie Quene of Scottes, published in a variety of forms in Scots, English, and Latin in the early 1570s; and his De Iure Regni apud Scotos of 1579, a work of political theory justifying the deposition of Mary and defending the legitimacy of violent action against tyrannical rulers.
Knox and Buchanan are also well known as Scotland’s first Protestant historians, as the former’s History of the Reformation in Scotland and the latter’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia have become foundation texts in Scottish Protestant identity, and, indeed, Scottish national identity. In addition, Knox’s devotional writings and personal letters offer rich insight into the Calvinist mind and form of expression in the mid-sixteenth century.
The observant reader may well question why two Scottish authors are discussed in a volume about English prose. A cursory glance at some of the titles listed so far may summon the impression—and rightly so—that the vast majority of Buchanan’s output was in the Latin language, augmented by a smattering of Scots. In the case of Knox, the question is even more vexed, as his contemporary and his more recent critics have challenged the authenticity of his Scots tongue, and viewed his writings—and the church and education system that his Reformation brought forth—as vehicles of Anglicization, detrimental to Scots language and culture. The implications of nationality and language will be drawn out in the final section of this chapter, but for now, it may suffice to emphasize that the Scotsmen Knox and Buchanan strode the historical and literary stage in a fundamentally British moment. The Scottish Reformation of 1560 had been shaped by English aid, and a developing amity with England and concurrent rejection of the auld French alliance. And the monarch whom Knox and Buchanan served, and then rejected, Mary Queen of Scots, was driven by her claim to the English throne. Knox and Buchanan were the most international of Calvinists, and England, it will be emphasized, loomed heavily on their horizons.
It was in 1558, during his spell of exile in Geneva, that Knox wrote and published the three tracts that reveal his Calvinist voice at its most urgent and desperate. In The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women Knox thundered against the rule of Mary Tudor in England on the grounds of her Catholic faith, her Spanish marriage, her persecution of Protestants, but most of all, her gender. And in The Appellation to the Nobility and Estates of Scotland and The Letter to the Commonalty, Knox demanded that the Regent Mary of Guise cease the persecution of Protestants and implement Reformation. Should she neglect to perform this duty, it was the obligation of the nobility, as duly constituted powers within the Kingdom of Scotland, to bypass the crown and implement proper forms of worship. At this juncture, the sequence of dynastic shifts in the Tudor, Stuart, and Valois families that would accelerate the possibility of Reformation in Scotland remained in the future, and Knox existed in a state of partial suspension: contented and settled in his adopted home, while simultaneously jittery and impatient, awaiting news from Scotland and England.
Yet, while the 1558 tracts are conventionally regarded as a canon-within-a-canon in Knox’s corpus of prose writing, 1 it is worth observing that they represent not so much a moment of crystallization in Knox’s thinking and rhetoric, but rather, a culmination in his reactions to exile that had been building at least since the accession of Mary Tudor to the English throne in 1553. The reader finds an early taste of this in the 1554 tract A Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God’s Truth in England, in which Knox, as minister to an English congregation in Frankfurt, heatedly condemned the Catholic powers of Europe, which England was in danger of joining:
But, O Englande, Englande! yf thou obstinatly wilt returne into Egypt; that is, yf thou contracte marriage, confederacy, or league, with such princes as do mayntayne and advance ydolatrye, (such as the Emperoure, which is no lesse enemy unto Christe than ever was Nero;) yf for the pleasure and frendshippe (I saye) of such princes, thou returne to thyne olde abhominations, before used under the Papistrie, then assuredly, O England! thou shalte be brought to desolation, by the meanes of those who favoures thou sekest, and by whome thou arte procured to fall from Christ, and to serve Antichrist.2
This example reveals many of the defining features of Knox’s prose. On the one hand, the reader encounters the deeply Old Testament concern of kingdoms or nations covenanting with God and the question of whether England would be an Israel or an Egypt. On the other hand, is the more immediate post-Reformation concern with ‘Papistrie’, idolatry, and Antichrist. And finally, the fearless, even reckless meddling with contemporary politics—the comparison of the Holy Roman Emperor with the tyrant Nero was dynamite in both Frankfurt and in England, given that the Emperor Charles V had become the father-in-law of Mary Tudor through her marriage to Philip of Spain. As a consequence of this publication, the Frankfurt English congregation, in league with the nervous municipal authorities, ejected Knox from the city in 1555.
The tone and content of the 1558 tracts suggest that Knox was not bowed by his experiences in Frankfurt. Collectively, these tracts are, as Roger Mason has put it, ‘less systematic political treatises than religious polemics couched in the language of Old Testament prophecy’.3 As Susan Felch emphasizes, in structural terms, The First Blast is ‘a textbook example of a public classical oration’, rigidly conventional in its engagement with scriptural and patristic sources.4 Knox believed that Old Testament law was still applicable in his own time. He quoted Deuteronomy on the Jewish law for the election of kings, which excluded foreigners and women, and argued that this law did not merely appertain to the Jews, but had remained in force ever since.5 And he mined the Old Testament for positive and negative examples of female rule. On the one hand, the paragon of female virtue, Deborah, a ruler whom God raised up ‘to be a mother and deliverer to His oppressed people’, and on the other hand, Jezebel and Athaliah, wanton tyrants and deserving casualties of God’s vengeance.6 It is, in part, this distinction—Knox’s acknowledgement that female rule could be both approved by God and beneficial for a kingdom—that has led Felch to argue against a simple reading of Knox as a misogynist.7 Knox’s impassioned rhetoric, which appeared to roundly denounce female capabilities, may have clouded an argument that was considerably more nuanced. Further evidence of the subtlety and complexity of Knox’s relationship to womankind, and to particular women, can be sought elsewhere, in his History of the Reformation and in his personal letters.
Related to Knox’s Old Testament style was his strong preoccupation with covenant ideas, and it is here, again, that the centrality of England to his ideas is once again apparent. In Knox’s conception, England was in danger of backsliding precisely because that kingdom had already experienced Protestant Reformation under Edward VI, but had declined with the succession of his Catholic sister. England was covenanted with God on Old Testament terms: ‘I fear not to affirm that the Gentiles (I mean every city, realm, province or nation amongst the Gentiles embracing Christ Jesus and His true religion) be bound to the same league and covenant that God made with His people Israel.’8 Consequently, England was under a greater expectation—from God and from Knox—to oppose the forces of Catholic tyranny. In contrast, because in 1558 Scotland had not yet implemented Reformation, no such covenant existed.9
The jeremiad form—an exhortation to maintain the high standards of Protestant worship or to suffer divine punishment for backsliding—is one that George Buchanan adopted as well, if uncharacteristically, and in a very different context. While a large portion of Knox’s corpus of writing preceded the Scottish watersheds of the 1560 Reformation and the 1567 deposition of Mary Queen of Scots, the bulk of Buchanan’s prose output was produced afterwards, and in response to these events. His Ane Admonitioun to the trew Lordis maintenaris of Justice, and obedience to the Kingis Grace, published in 1571, adopted a style reminiscent of Knox’s Appellations to press the Scottish nobility to maintain their fight against the party of the exiled Mary Queen of Scots, urging them to ‘considder how godlie is ye action that 3e haif tane on hand to writ’.10 Buchanan took on a sermonic tone to assert that God was on the side of the reformers and the King’s party:
Think it na les providence of 3our hevinlie fader than gif he had send 3ow ane legioun of angellis to 3our defence. And remember yat he schew him self neuir mair freindfull and succurabill to na people yan he hes done to 3ow and traist weill gif 3e will pseveir in obedience and recognosce his manifold graces he will multiply his benefites to 3ow and 3our posteritie and sall neuir leave 3ow until 3e for3et him first.11
This covenantal language of God’s expectations of His people was highly unusual for Buchanan. Indeed, it is tempting to speculate that Buchanan was here adopting Knox’s style, using the conventions of his appellations, which must have been familiar and well established in Scotland by the 1570s. To explain this, the context is central. The Admonitioun was written in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of the Earl of Moray, early in 1570. The killing of the regent not only left Scotland leaderless in a crucial stage of the struggle against the Queen’s party, but was also a crushing personal blow to Buchanan, who had been a friend and client of Moray. This was a desperate period for Buchanan in which he all but gave up his Latin writing.
The Admonitioun is therefore one of the only instances in which Buchanan unreservedly adopted the Calvinist language strongly associated with Knox and the Scottish Reformation. In general, it was humanism, more so than Calvinism, that marked Buchanan’s intellect and morality, and imprinted itself upon his writings in a style that privileged classical rhetoric over Christian exegesis, and that is therefore surprisingly secular for the sixteenth century.
The spare elegance of Buchanan’s Latin style is best illustrated in his short, but explosive, tract of political theory, De Iure Regni apud Scotos. Written in 1567 in defence of the deposition of Mary Queen of Scots, and published in 1579, the De Iure Regni advocated a radical theory of resistance that went some way beyond the noble-led action against Mary to admit the possibility that private individuals—would-be assassins—could legitimately act against tyrants. The tract takes the form of a dialogue between the wise master Buchanan and the naïve pupil Thomas Maitland. Maitland was a diplomat and his inclusion in Buchanan’s schemes was much against his own will, and the will of his family—William Maitland of Lethington was a loyal supporter of Mary Queen of Scots and the target of another of Buchanan’s polemics, the Chamaeleon, written around 1570.
The dialogue form allowed Buchanan to place words in the mouths of his ‘characters’, and it was this tactic that facilitated a degree of distance from the biblical exegesis beloved of Knox. It was Maitland who raised Old Testament examples, such as the order by the prophet Jeremiah that the Jews obey the tyrannical king of the Assyrians, so that Buchanan could then relativize them, in this case, with the argument that single scriptural examples should not be treated as precedents: ‘The prophet does not command the Jews to obey all tyrants but only the king of the Assyrians. If you wish to infer a legal principle from what is ordained in one particular case, first, you know very well—for dialectic has taught you—how absurdly you would be proceeding.’12 Buchanan even went so far as to scorn the jeremiad style beloved of Knox, ridiculing the claim that God set tyrants over peoples as a punishment and insisting that only royal sycophants and flatterers would claim such a thing. ‘If anyone maintains that even bad princes are ordained by God, beware of the sophistry of such talk.’13
The flexibility of Buchanan’s writing, his apparently effortless shift between multiple languages, genres, and registers, is also illustrated by the tract that is effectively a companion piece to the De Iure Regni, written at around the same time, but with a considerably more immediate and scurrilous purpose. The De Maria Scotorum Regina, published in 1571, was originally produced in response to the demands of Elizabeth’s government for evidence against Mary Queen of Scots, following her flight to England in 1568. The evidence compiled by Buchanan, among others, included the controversial Casket Letters, which purported to offer proof, in the Queen’s own hand, of her complicity in an adulterous affair with Bothwell and the murder of Darnley. While the English government had been at first reluctant to judge Mary’s case, the exposure of the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 made an attack on her character expedient and Buchanan’s text, which is better known by its translated title of Ane Detectioun of the duinges of Marie Quene of Scottes, was seized upon for publication. Jenny Wormald has aptly described Buchanan’s polemic as ‘copy for the Sun in the style of The Times’, as it perpetrated a series of insinuations and falsehoods against Mary.14 One would not wish to make an enemy of Buchanan. In one passage that illustrates the boldness of his attack, Buchanan added planned infanticide to the charges of adultery and mariticide. He claimed insight into a meeting with her advisers where, having fallen out of love with Darnley and come to actively despise him, Mary raised the possibility of divorce:
Here someone voiced the objection that if that were done their son would be made a bastard, since he had been born out of wedlock … She thought over that suggestion for a little, and realised that it was true; and as she dared not at that time reveal her plan to make away with her son, she gave over the idea of divorce. Yet, from that day onward she never left her intention of destroying the king, as may well be perceived from what followed.15
To discuss the published translation of 1571 would be to depart from Buchanan’s own literary production and enter into the intrigues of the translator and his political masters, but it is worth observing that yet again, the issue of Anglo-Scottish relations was central to the production and reception of the Detectioun. The English translator, working at the behest of Elizabeth’s minister, William Cecil, converted Buchanan’s Latin into what is best described as ‘pseudo-Scots’, in an effort to disguise the involvement and interest of the Elizabethan regime.16
For both John Knox and George Buchanan, the writing of history was a gargantuan task that resulted in the largest single pieces of work of their respective canons. As such, Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland and Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia are deserving of considerable attention. What follows will consider, firstly, the differences of scope, style, and priorities between Knox and Buchanan; and, secondly, the ways in which key figures of the period are portrayed, in particular, Knox himself, and Mary Queen of Scots. The question of how the histories produced by Knox and Buchanan have contributed to the shaping of Scottish Protestant and national identity will be considered in the final section.
Very different as Knox and Buchanan were as historians, we may readily grasp their intentions in undertaking to write in this genre. History could serve as a conduit for the broad sweep of their ideas, and provide opportunities to give life and speech to abstract political and theological ideas. The writing of history was the most immediate way to convey the passions and ideas of their own time, while presenting complex theories in an accessible and personalized style. Beyond these general observations, however, it is possible to discern individual interests and priorities behind these two historical projects.
Knox had conceived his project of writing the History of the Reformation before the Scottish Reformation itself was completed in 1560. The material in Book II, which charted the burgeoning of the Protestant movement and the developing resistance against Mary of Guise down to 1559, was originally intended as a polemical justification of the reformers’ position, an urgent contribution to a live debate. He stated in the preface that his original intent had been to narrate the period from 1558–61, but he then realized the value of extending the coverage backwards to narrate the lives and sufferings of those who had been martyred for the Protestant cause.17 With the Reformation completed in 1560, Knox widened the scope of his project again, projecting backwards to the fifteenth century and forwards to the personal reign of Mary Queen of Scots. Knox occasionally digressed from his historical narrative to allude to the time of its composition, for example, in mentioning Mary Queen of Scots ‘that now myschevouslie regnes’, or in commenting approvingly, and at considerable length, on the murder of Mary’s servant David Riccio in 1566.18
Buchanan, in contrast, wrote not simply a history of the Scottish Reformation, but a history of Scotland from the earliest times to his own. The Historia began with the (mythical) founding of the Scottish monarchy in 330 BC and included the lives, and the often-gruesome deaths, of the early kings of Scots. The pattern that Buchanan began with these mythical kings continued throughout the Historia, with the narrating of regular acts of resistance against tyrannical monarchs, down to the recent examples of the regicide of James III, and the depositions of Mary of Guise and Mary Queen of Scots. He sought to demonstrate that the political disruptions of 1559–60 and 1567 were consistent with practices in Scottish history in the long term. By terminating with the death of the Regent Mar in 1572, and thereby giving an account of the deposition of Mary in 1567, Buchanan’s coverage extended beyond that of Knox. Significantly, the organizing principle of Buchanan’s account was not the developing Reformation, but was, rather, the Scottish monarchy and acts of resistance against it.
Further comparisons between Knox and Buchanan can be drawn based on their respective conceptions of history. For Knox, Calvinist theology led inescapably to the conclusion that God’s providence was an irresistible and total force behind the shaping of history. Thus, the History of the Reformation is replete with statements that deny human agency in human action and intention. For example, ‘God so blessed the laubouris of his weak servandis, that na small parte of the Baronis of this Realme began to abhorre the tyranny of the Bischoppes: God did so oppin thare eyis by the light of his woord, that thei could clearelie decerne betuix idolatrie and the trew honouring of God.’19 This was a world-view that left little room for independent human agency or contingency, although, as a historical method, it was not as lacking in sophistication as this description may suggest. As Richard Kyle explains, ‘Knox was no fool in this regard for he also recognized that events has secondary causes (i.e. human beings), and he knew the importance of worldly considerations to these weak instruments of the Lord.’20
By contrast, although Buchanan’s Calvinism gave some colouring to the content of his Historia, his general conception of history owed more to humanism.21 As a humanist exercise, the study of history was designed to encourage morality and good citizenship in its elite readers, as preparation for their lives of public service. Correspondingly, Buchanan’s Historia, following the fashion of Guicciardini and Machiavelli, is filled with stirring motivational speeches in political, judicial, military, and ecclesiastical contexts, all carefully crafted examples of the art of rhetoric.
Both Knox and Buchanan, writing in their respective styles, created heroes and villains to embody the values of their histories, and on one thing they were agreed: Mary Queen of Scots was to be portrayed in the most negative possible terms, as a wife, as a mother, as a Catholic, and as a queen. In Buchanan’s account, the tone was much the same as in the Detectioun: pretended insight into Mary’s plans and motives. Thus, as Bothwell and Mary’s conspiracy against Darnley was planned, Mary pretended reconciliation with him to divert suspicion when the house was blown up—but her haste to avoid the destruction of a fine piece of furniture betrayed her involvement. ‘The bed in which the queen had lain for some nights, was removed from its place, and a worse one substituted in its stead; amid such prodigality of character, such was their care for a little money.’22
In contrast to Buchanan’s status as a judgemental narrator prying into Mary’s secrets, Knox’s treatment of the Queen recounted real events, as he had several audiences with her in the early 1560s. The standard pattern for these meetings was established quickly: Knox would reduce Mary to tears by hectoring her on the errors of her Catholic faith. On one occasion, Knox told the Queen, ‘When it shall please God to deliver you fra that bondage of darknes and errour in the which ye have been nurisshed, for the lack of trew doctrin, your Majestie will fynd the libertie of my toung nothing offensive.’23 These accounts have made a considerable contribution to fixing the reputations of the over-bearing, intolerant Knox and the weak and melodramatic Mary. But are they fact or fiction, narration or creation? Tellingly, a recent compilation of sources has placed one of these accounts under the heading of ‘Early Modern Literature’, emphasizing the tension between Knox’s recollections of actual conversations and the imposed ideological thrust of his narrative, which was, of course, highly critical both of Catholicism and female rule.24
The portrayal of Knox himself also offers an opportunity to compare the historical styles and methods of our two historians. The difficulty of reckoning Knox’s contribution to the making of the Scottish Reformation is compounded by the fact that he played a significant role in recording and narrating the details of it, and therefore may have had the power to construct—and overemphasize—his own place in history. Knox could hardly have avoided covering his own part in events and referred to himself regularly, in the third person, beginning in 1546, as he accompanied George Wishart in the period leading up to his mentor’s execution for heresy, through to 1564 and the termination of the narrative. Jenny Wormald has suggested that his ‘towering place in the history of the Scottish Reformation’ may owe something to the significance of his History of the Reformation and his self-promotion within the text.25 J. H. Burns agrees, commenting that Knox was ‘no mean self-publicist’.26 In contrast, James Kirk argues that Knox’s account of his actions in bringing about the Reformation was not self-aggrandizing or exaggerated: ‘He might be ever-ready to blow his Master’s trumpet, as he put it, but he was remarkably reticent in much of his History about blowing his own.’27 To go some way to reconciling these views, it might be argued that while Knox did not exaggerate his own contribution to the shaping of the Reformation, his chosen emphasis on reformers and martyrs downplayed the role of the Scottish aristocracy, with their manifold kin interests and conflicts, and international diplomacy, in its consolidation.
More subtle coverage of these varied historical causes is to be found in Buchanan’s Historia, a narrative that gave Knox a role, but not the starring role. Gordon Donaldson’s statement that Knox was not mentioned in the Historia until as late as the coronation of James VI in 1567 is inaccurate.28 Knox made his first appearance in Buchanan’s narrative, albeit without introduction or the inclusion of any background or biographical detail, at the siege of St Andrews in 1546. He reappeared in Perth in 1559, giving a provocative sermon that inspired an iconoclastic riot, and was last taken note of for his sermon at the coronation of James VI in 1567.29 Knox’s death in 1572 was not recorded in Buchanan’s Historia, although it took place only one month after Buchanan’s chosen termination point, the death of the Regent Mar and the handover of power to Morton. It is surprising (or perhaps telling) that Buchanan should forgo the opportunity to eulogize the influential reformer. Put simply, Buchanan’s humanist priorities required a different sort of Protestant hero than the firebrand providentialist Knox.
While the discussion of controversial and historical writing has largely covered George Buchanan’s prose output, in the case of John Knox there is much more to be said, with his personal correspondence and his devotional writing (and the extensive overlap between these two forms) worthy of consideration. Before moving on to these areas, however, it is worth pausing to consider Knox’s association—or lack thereof—with some of the founding texts of the English and Scottish Reformations. It needs to be emphasized that the Confession of Faith and the First Book of Discipline which institutionalized and defined Scottish Protestantism in the aftermath of the Reformation Parliament of 1560 were the work of a committee of which Knox was only one member. Similarly, although Knox’s name has been heavily associated with the Geneva Bible of 1560, laboriously translated into English in the second half of the 1550s by exiles in Geneva who were Knox’s friends and colleagues, recent research has demonstrated that Knox’s own contribution to the project was slight.30
As the foregoing examples of Knox’s controversial and historical writings will have illustrated, the great reformer was not necessarily a great theologian: quite simply, his strengths did not lie in this area. He was the author of a number of religious treatises, most notably his On Predestination of 1560, a defence of Calvin’s theology in which Knox could not resist resorting to polemic to attack those with whom he disagreed. While the text is populated by ‘pestilent and perverse’ papists, Knox reserved most of his ire for Anabaptists, those who ‘wolde have all things in common, contrary to the ordre of nature and policie’.31
For a more human and, we might say, humane understanding of Knox’s beliefs and his writing style, we would do well to consider his personal correspondence. As Kenneth Farrow has noticed, there is a strong connection between Knox’s personal letters and his History of the Reformation, as he often gave narratives of events to his correspondents, events that were later re-narrated in the History.32 For example, in a letter to Anne Locke of 1559, Knox told the story of a recent iconoclastic riot in Perth:
After complaint and appellatioun frome such a deceitfull sentence, they putt to their hands to reformatioun in Sanct Johnstoun, where the places of idolatrie of Gray and Blacke Friers, and of Charter-house monkes, were made equall with the ground; all monuments of idolatrie, that could be apprehended, consumed with fire; and preests commanded, under paine of death, to desist frome their blasphemous masse.33
The style here is recognizably similar to that of the History of the Reformation. However, Knox has not been entirely honest with his correspondent. The riot was, in fact, inspired by one of his own sermons, but he has neglected to mention this. This example may serve to illustrate some of Knox’s aims in writing a very long letter—presumably, the long sections of narrative were intended for a wider readership than the recipient alone.34
Of greater interest to many critics are the letters in which Knox apparently reveals his true personality and his true voice. Susan Felch has emphasized the value of Knox’s letters to female correspondents, including the above-mentioned Anne Locke, the wife of a London merchant who hosted Knox when in London, and corresponded with him between 1556 and 1562. Also of significance is Knox’s correspondence with Elizabeth Bowes, the mother of the woman he later married, Marjory. In these letters we encounter a Knox with a significantly different voice from the confident interpreter of God’s Word and providence that resounds from his published works. For example, in his first letter to Mrs Bowes of 1553, the reader encounters a meeker Knox, one lacking in confidence about his calling, and his fitness to guide and lead others:
Albeit I never lack the presence and plane image of my awn wreachit infirmitie, yit seing syn sa manifestlie abound in al estaitis, I am compellit to thounder out the threattnyngis of God aganis obstinat rebellaris; in doing whairof (albeit as God knaweth I am no malicious nor obstinat sinner) I sumtymes am woundit, knowing my self criminall and giltie in many, yea in all, (malicious obstinacie laid asyd,) thingis that in utheris I reprehend.35
For Susan Felch, then, study of Knox’s correspondence with his female network militates against any simple equation of Knox as a misogynist, whatever his dealings with Mary Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots. She finds him to be a warm and sensitive writer with a deep regard for the spiritual development of his friends and concludes: ‘It is primarily idolatry rather than misogyny which motivates Knox. The regiment of women is a subset of idolatry; it is monstrous not because females are inherently monstrous, but because such rule is against the word of God.’36
In sum, the significance of the writings of Knox and Buchanan lies in their status as founding texts for a new Scotland—a Protestant Scotland. Their historical writings, in particular, have been seen as formative of new national identities. As Crawford Gribben has written of Knox, ‘His history was to be a history of the Reformation in Scotland, and his writing of the Reformation would self-consciously parallel the writing of the nation itself. But in writing of the nation, Knox would be fashioning himself, sculpting a personality that would haunt the Scottish imagination.’37 Profoundly shaped by his experiences as an exile, his choice of history as a project, and the tone of what he wrote, echoed the choices made by his friends: John Foxe, Knox’s supporter in the Frankfurt controversy of 1554–5, authored his Acts and Monuments with much the same aims for England as Knox had for Scotland.
Roger Mason has explored these questions with reference to both of our historians and argues that it was Buchanan’s account, rather than Knox’s, that had the greater potential to serve the Protestant cause. One issue was that, while Buchanan’s Historia came before the reading public in print in 1582, Knox’s History of the Reformation remained inaccessible, with the first edition of 1587 suppressed by the Elizabethan authorities, and another full edition published only as late as 1644. A second issue was that, for Knox, the writing of history was not the priority in a career that had engaged with many forms and genres of writing, and encompassed preaching and politicking as well. Or, as R. D. S. Jack has concisely put it, ‘Knox wrote a lot and not always well.’38 In contrast, Buchanan’s broader scope and more elegant style provided Protestant Scotland ‘with the historical legitimacy it required but which Knox had failed to provide’.39
The greatest controversy over Knox’s contribution to the shaping of national identity, however, has been one of language, rather than history. A succession of scholars have viewed the Reformation in Scotland, and Knox as its embodiment, as a force for Anglicization, with the closer relationship with England, and, in particular, reliance on the English Geneva Bible in the absence of a Scots translation, as contributing to a decline in the Scots language. The arguments of commentators like Billy Kay have a long pedigree, as even Knox’s contemporary opponents ribbed him for his mixed Scots and English forms. In particular, Ninian Winzet, a Catholic controversialist living in exile on the Continent, wrote against Knox in Latin ‘for I am nocht acquyntit with 3our Southeroun’.40 It must be emphasized, however, that Knox’s Catholic opponents used their Scots language as only one of a rich variety of rhetorical strategies aimed at discrediting Knox and the Reformation he represented. A reading of the controversial writings of Winzet and his fellow Scottish Catholics in exile reveals the inventiveness and viciousness of their polemic—with allegations against Knox ranging from incest to witchcraft.41 That they chose to attack Knox as a Scot, and as a writer of Scots, is hardly surprising.
A comparison of Knox’s language with that of a contemporary historian of Scotland will be instructive. Described as ‘Scotland’s first vernacular prose historian’—a designation that suggests that Knox was not a vernacular historian—Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie lived through the Scottish Reformation in Fife and wrote his account of it shortly afterwards.42 In these passages, each historian narrates the events immediately following the murder of Cardinal Beaton, and the opening of the siege of St Andrews Castle, in 1546.
Knox, History of the Reformation
And so was he brought to the East blockhouse head, and schawen dead ower the wall to the faithless multitude, which wold not believe befoir it saw: How miserably lay David Betoun, cairfull Cardinall. And so thei departed, without Requiem aeternam, and Requiscant in pace, song for his saule. Now, becaus the wether was hote, (for it was in Maij, as ye have heard,) and his funerallis could not suddandly be prepared, it was thowght best, to keap him frome styncking, to geve him great salt ynewcht, a cope of lead, and a nuk in the boddome of the Sea-toore, (a place where many of Goddis children had bein empreasoned befoir,) to await what exqueis his brethren the Bischoppes wold prepare for him.43
Lindsay of Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles of Scotland
Then the cry raise into the toun and said the cardinall was slaine; then they that favorit him gat ledderis to leder the wall, trowand that he had bene on lyfe to haue helpit him. Bot the men of war thairin persaiffit thame, and to that effect brocht him done in ane pair of scheitis and laid him on the wall heid, that all might sie him deid that they might mak no defence for his lyfe. And in the mean tyme quhene he was lyand on the wall deid as I haue schawin to zow, ane callit Guthrie loussit done his ballope point and pischit in his mouth that all the peill might sie; bot it was ane misnurtartnes deid and he was bot ane knaif that did it, and thraif never the better efterwart bot dieit ane sudden deid ffor he could not gett lessur to say god help him and so endit money of thaim that had put hand in him. And than quhen they had done quhat they pleisit to him thay tuik him and saltit him and pat him in ane keist and eirdit him schamefullie in ane midding quhair he lay the space of sevin monethis or evir he was eirdit in kirk or queir.44
To compare the two styles is to notice the apparently more authentic Scots orthography of Lindsay of Pitscottie, with the use of the yogh (although excised by a modern editor), the <quh> form, and the <-is> and <-it> suffixes for plural nouns and verbs. However, recent scholarship has argued that the view of Knox’s Anglicized language requires further interrogation. We might note the presence of more obviously Scots forms in Knox’s letter to Mrs Bowes, quoted above. This analysis can also be extended to Knox’s more explicitly public writings. Building on a suggestion of R. J. Lyall, and by taking his analysis back to manuscripts of Knox’s writings—of which few were written in his own hand—Kenneth Farrow has painstakingly demonstrated that multiple interventions by scribes, editors, and publishers may have created an impression of Anglicized language that was neither Knox’s intention, nor his natural authorial voice.45 In short, Knox wrote in a wide variety of forms and styles, always seeking to tailor the medium and the message to ensure maximum impact upon his intended readership. Scholarship of the 1558 tracts, as discussed above, has emphasized the subtlety of the distinction he made between Scotland and England in their respective relationships to God. We should not be surprised to find Knox engaging with the languages of Scotland and England on multiple levels as well, and we need not conclude that this was a compromise or betrayal of authentic Scottish values.
To conclude, Knox’s reputation has long been controversial, and literary judgements, in particular, have tended to be negative. Maurice Lindsay, for example, has displayed a dismissive attitude to most of his output, with only slightly less derision for the History of the Reformation, but heaped praise upon the apparently more authentic Scots of Lindsay of Pitscottie’s Historie and Cronicles of Scotland.46 However, a new wave of research is challenging the old assumptions about Calvinist misery and Anglicization dampening Scottish distinctiveness. The new scholarly edition of Buchanan’s De Iure Regni is indicative of renewed interest in this polymath as a writer whose importance extends beyond the geographical confines of Scottish history to the broader fields of British and continental Renaissance and Reformation studies. Scholarship on John Knox is also developing in more positive and subtle directions. The final word will go to Kenneth Farrow: ‘Not only is John Knox’s The Historie of the Reformatioun the finest literary prose work of the times to which it belongs so inseparably, it is one of the very greatest works of prose in the whole of Scottish literature.’47
Buchanan, George. A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots: A Critical Edition and Translation of George Buchanan’s De Iure Regni apud Scotos, ed. and trans. Roger A. Mason and Martin S. Smith, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
Dawson, Jane E. A. Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007).
Farrow, Kenneth D. John Knox: Reformation Rhetoric and the Traditions of Scots Prose, 1490–1570 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004).
Felch, Susan M. ‘The Rhetoric of Biblical Authority: John Knox and the Question of Women’, Sixteenth-Century Journal, 26 (1995): 805–21.
Gribben, Crawford. ‘John Knox, Reformation History and National Self-Fashioning’, Reformation and Renaissance Review, 8 (2006): 48–66.
——— and David George Mullan, eds. Literature and the Scottish Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009).
Knox, John. On Rebellion, ed. Roger A. Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Mason, Roger A. ed. John Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998).
——— Kingship and the Commonweal: Political Thought in Renaissance and Reformation Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell, 1998).
Warnicke, Retha M. Mary Queen of Scots (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006).