f 1562, in a Supplication, no doubt written by Knox, and
certainly breathing what had been his spirit ever since the early days
of Wishart, conjoins the cause of both in passionate eloquence:

'The Poor be of three sorts: the poor labourers of the ground;
the poor desolate beggars, orphans, widows, and strangers; and
the poor ministers of Christ Jesus His holy Evangel: which are
_all_ so cruelly treated.... For now the poor labourers of the
ground are so oppressed by the cruelty of those that pay their
Third, that they for the most part _advance upon the poor_
whatsoever they pay to the Queen or to any other. As for the
very indigent and poor, _to whom God commands a sustentation to
be provided of the Teinds_, they are so despised that it is a
wonder that the sun giveth light and heat to the earth where
God's name is so frequently called upon, and no mercy, according
to His commandment, shown to His creatures. And also for the
ministers, their livings are so appointed, that the most part
shall live but a beggar's life. And all cometh of that
impiety--'[91]

The position that the 'patrimony of the Church' is fundamentally rather
the 'patrimony of the poor,' and that ecclesiastics are merely its
distributors, was anything but new. It is a commonplace[92] among the
learned of the Catholic Church--the difference was that at this crisis
it was possible for Scotland to act upon it, and that the state was
urged to remember the poor by a man who, with all his devotion to God
and to the other world, burned with compassion for the hard wrought
labourers of his people. For it will be observed that here, as
elsewhere, Knox is concerned, not only for the 'very indigent,' and the
technically 'poor,'[93] but for those especially whom he calls 'your
poor brethren; the labourers and manurers (hand-workers) of the ground.'
In the Book of Discipline, before entering upon its provisions for
dividing the tithe between the ministers, the poor, and the schools, he
urges that the labourers must be allowed 'to pay so reasonable teinds,
that they may feel some benefit of Christ Jesus, now preached unto
them.' For

'With the grief of our hearts we hear that some gentlemen are
now as cruel over their tenants as ever were the Papists,
requiring of them whatever before they paid to the Church, so
that the Papistical tyranny shall only be changed into the
tyranny of t