The Reformation Crisis

Chapter 6 The Reformation Crisis

According to Jane Dawson, the people of St Andrews ‘awoke on Sunday 11 June 1559 in a town full of Catholic churches and went to bed that night with a Prot- estant burgh and a Reformed parish church’.1 This is a slight exaggeration. Nev- ertheless, St Andrews did undergo a startlingly swift transition from Catholic to Protestant control. In the spring of 1559 St Andrews was still a functioning Catholic city.2 By the end of the summer the burgh had become a bastion of the Protestant cause. The Reformation of St Andrews was planned by a select group of Protes- tant nobles and activists. At the beginning of June 1559 Lord James Stewart, the prior of St Andrews Cathedral, and his fellow Protestant sympathiser, the Earl of Argyll, wrote to the lairds of Dun and Pittarrow, the Provost of Dundee, and ‘otheris, professouris in Anguss’, asking them to come to St Andrews ‘for Reformatioun to be maid thair’.3 On Sunday 11 June the Reformers launched their campaign to convert Scotland’s religious capital.4 That morning, in direct contravention of a ‘strait commandment’ from the archbishop of St Andrews, John Knox delivered an inflammatory sermon in Holy Trinity Church.5 He took

1 Jane Dawson, ‘“The Face of Ane Perfyt Reformed Kyrk”: St Andrews and the Early Scottish Reformation’, in James Kirk, ed., Humanism and Reform: Essays in Honour of James K. Cam- eron (Oxford, 1991), p. 415. 2 Certainly, the officials of institutions such as the burgh council and the craft guilds were still showing support for Catholic practices such as chaplainries and anniversary masses during the latter months of 1558 and at the beginning of 1559. 3 wjk, vol. 1, p. 347. Lord James Stewart and the Earl of Argyll had ‘joyned themselves to the Congregatioun openlie’ at the end of May 1559. Letter from John Knox to Anna Lock, dated at St Andrews, 23 June 1559. wjk, vol. 6, p. 24. The idea that Lord James and Argyll were central to the decision to reform St Andrews is given further credence by a letter from the Earl of Northumberland to William Cecil which states that: ‘the erle of Argyle and the pryer of Saynt Androus hath defaced dyvers churches with plucking doune the Images… and as I heir say they ar presently going to one of the riches churches in Scotland for to spoile’. This letter is dated Alnwick, 18 June 1559. Given the delay in news travelling from Scotland to northern England, it seems likely that Northumberland was referring to the reformation of St Andrews Cathedral (which was probably in progress at the time the earl was writing). tna, SP 52/1, f. 73. 4 There is a slight debate about this dating, see footnote hrs, vol. 1, p. 182. However, 11 June fits with Knox’s claim to Anna Lock that he preached for three days in St Andrews before the Reformation of the city began on 14 June. See below in this chapter. 5 wjk, vol. 6, p. 25. hrs, vol. 1, p. 182.

98 Chapter 6 as his text ‘the ejectioun of the byaris and the sellaris furth of the Tempill of Jerusalem’, likening ‘the corruptioun that was thair to the corruptioun that is in the Papistrie’.6 Knox continued to preach in Holy Trinity for a further three days.7 During that time Archbishop Hamilton (finding he was openly defied by sections of the local community) fled the city, and ‘the Provost and Baillies, [with] the commonalty for the most part’ came out openly in support of the Protestant cause.8 This paved the way for the official Reformation of St An- drews to begin on 14 June.9 From this date onwards the burgh of St Andrews was administered by Protestants. In the days that followed local churches were stripped of their altars and images, a kirk session was established to enforce Calvinist moral discipline, and efforts were made to secure the lasting conversion of the local population.10 By the end of the year more than three hundred men from St Andrews had signed a document publicly pledging their support for the Protestant Lords of the Congregation and promising that they would assist ‘with our bodies, geir and force, for maynteyning of the trew religioun of Christe, and downe putting of all superstitioun and idolatrie’.11 In the space of a few months the religion of the burgh had been fundamentally changed.12

6 wjk, vol. 1, p. 349. 7 wjk, vol. 6, p. 25. This summary of Knox’s sermon might portray it as more measured than it actually was. The anonymous author of the ‘Historie of the Estate of Scotland’, which was transcribed in 1663 but was probably based on an earlier work, claimed that Knox stated that ‘the Papists and Idolators should be whipt and driven forth of the Kirk of God’. Anonymous, ‘Historie of the Estate of Scotland, from the Year 1559 to 1566’, in D.Laing, ed., The Miscellany of the Wodrow Society, pp. 59–60. 8 wjk, vol. 6, p. 25. hrs, vol. 1, pp. 182–183. 9 In his letter to Anna Lock of 23 June, Knox stated that the Protestant leaders had de- termined that in St Andrews ‘Christ Jesus sould…be openlie preached, …the places and monuments of idolatrie sould be removed, and that superstitious habits sould be changed’. He reported that ‘This reformatioun there was begun the 14th of June’. wjk, vol. 6, p. 25. 10 The first entry in the St Andrews Kirk Session minutes is dated July 1559. StAKS, vol. 1, p. 1. 11 StAKS, vol. 1, pp. 6–11. 12 To contemporaries the permanence of this transition was not necessarily quite as obvi- ous as it is with hindsight. At least two abortive attempts were made by Mary of Guise and French forces to capture St Andrews for the Catholic cause. Immediately after the archbishop’s flight, Mary of Guise and Archbishop Hamilton prepared an army to retake St Andrews. However, they appear to have lost their nerve and, following a stand-off at Cupar Muir on 13 June 1559, the regent and the archbishop entered into negotiations with the Protestant leaders, enabling the conversion of St Andrews to continue. hrs, vol. 1, pp. 183–186. During the winter of 1559 to 1560, St Andrews again seemed threatened by Catholic forces. In a letter dated 20 January 1559 (New Style 1560), the Earl of Arran (who was then at Dysart) reported to William Maitland of Lethington that his troops had been