THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND

By mid-sixteenth century Scotland was still a very poor, backward but independent kingdom, fearing military annexation by England. The Reformation developed very slowly in Scotland. By 1540 a number of Protestant preachers had been burned at the stake which served to raise public consciousness toward Protestantism. In 1547 a young Protestant preacher by the name of John Knox, along with many other Protestants, were forced to take refuge in St. Andrew's castle. Having been ordained to the Roman priesthood, Knox was converted to Reformation doctrines by George Wishart, who was burned to death at the stake in 1536. The French, siding with the Scottish Catholics, led by Mary Queen of Scots, attacked the castle forcing its defenders to surrender. Knox and others were carried off to be galley slaves, i.e. rowers, in French ships. The apocryphal statement, "God, give to me Scotland or I die," is attributed to Knox as he passed his homeland's shoreline in a French galley. After nineteen months he was released and went to England where he preached from a Reformed perspective.

Mary Queen of Scots increased her dependency on Catholic France. This infuriated Scottish nationalists, moving them to sympathize with her antagonists, the Protestants, led by Knox. Knox, eventually found his way to Geneva, where he became a devoted student of John Calvin. Knox summed his impression of Geneva by saying, "Never was there a more godly city." While in Geneva, Knox worked on a translation of the English Bible known as the Geneva or "Breeches" Bible. In Genesis the account reads, "And God sewed breeches for Adam and Eve." Knox, seeing how many patriotic Scotchmen were finished with Mary because of her French dependency, returned to Scotland. Within a week mobs were destroying monasteries and Catholic sanctuaries to Knox's disgust. Knox was a Protestant, not an anarchist, nor an iconoclast. A civil war broke out lasting for nearly a year until Queen Elizabeth of England sent aid to the Scottish Protestants. Mary, still holding the crown with Scotland's consent, went to France.

In 1560 the Scottish Parliament adopted a Reformed confession of faith, known as the Scot's Confession, for the nation. They also passed anti-Catholic laws inflicting capital punishment on those who dared to celebrate mass three times or more. Throughout the nation Reformed theology and the Presbyterian system of church government, i.e., congregational election of pastors and elders, superseded the appointment system of bishops. Larger geographical areas were organized into presbyteries where ruling and teaching elders gathered as an assembly to vote on church concerns. A general assembly of elders covering the nation of Scotland was also established and met when there were issues confronting the presbyteries as a whole.

For a period of time a patronage system in which wealthy land owners or politicians hired their own pastors competed with congregational calls of pastors. This was not received well by those of Presbyterian conviction and eventually faded out of practice.
The thoroughly democratic republican style of Presbyterian government was stamped indelibly on the consciences of the Scottish people, making them a bridgehead for representative government wherever, in the future, they should migrate.

After hostile feelings calmed down, Mary, who had gone to France, returned to Scotland still the legal possessor of the crown. She passed through several marriages which greatly alarmed and frustrated the moral conscience of her people. She married one man suspected of killing her previous husband. She even married him through Protestant rites, but Scotland was now through with her. She was imprisoned and her one year old son, James was made king with a regent in place until he reached majority. She managed to escape Scotland and flee to England where her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, put her in the London Tower and eventually had her executed for her conspiracies against the English crown, to which Mary also laid claim.

John Knox, a man of raw courage, died in 1572. Few could or would have done what he did. Many times he stood face to face before the Queen and there he won the battle of wits. Mary's reign made something of a chauvinist out of him. He believed no woman was fit to rule a man and told her so to her face. Two strong personalities fought their battle of wits. Providence laid the victory with the man John Knox. In 1706 Scotland joined England to form Great Britain.