ame over from Germany. But the Scotch clergy was
resolved to defend itself with all its might. Sometimes it had to sit
in judgment on invectives against its disorderly and luxurious life,
sometimes on refusals to pay established dues: or Lutheran doctrines
had been preached: it persecuted all with equal severity as tending to
injure the stability of holy Church, and awarded the most extreme
penalties. To put suspected heretics to death by fire was the order of
the day; happy the man who escaped the unrelenting persecution by
flight, which was only possible amid great peril.

These two causes, an undeniably corrupt condition and relentless
punishment of those who blamed it as it well deserved, gave the Reform
movement in Scotland, which was repressed but not stifled, a peculiar
character of exasperation and thirst for vengeance.

Nor was it without a political bearing in Scotland as elsewhere. In
particular Henry VIII proposed to his nephew, King James V, to remodel
the Church after his example: and a part of the nobility, which was
already favourably disposed towards England, would have gladly seen
this done. But James preferred the French pattern to the English: he
was kept firm in his Catholic and French sympathies by his wife, Mary
of Guise, and by the energetic Archbishop Beaton. Hence he became
involved in the war with England in which he fell, and after this it
occasionally seemed, especially at the time of the invasions by the
Duke of Somerset, as if the English, and in connexion with them the
Protestant, sympathies would gain the ascendancy. But national
feelings were still stronger than the religious. Exactly because
England defended and recommended the religious change it failed to
make way in Scotland. Under the regency of the Queen dowager, with
some passing fluctuations, the clerical interests on the whole kept
the upper hand. In spite of a general sympathy the prospects of Reform
were slender. It could not reckon on any quarrel between the
government and the higher clergy: foreign affairs rather exercised a
hostile influence. It is remarkable how under these unfavourable
circumstances the foundation of the Scotch Church was laid.

Most of the Scots who had fled from the country were content to
provide for their subsistence in a foreign land and improve their own
culture. But there was one among them who did not reconcile himself
for one moment to this fate. John Knox was the first who formed a
Protestan