hardly be said to have relinquished the Catholic tradition. The new creed of Northern Christendom had not had time to crystallise; and the doctrinal standards of the various sects were not yet regarded with the unreasoning reverence which time and habit beget. There was nothing in Maitland's view to prevent an "accord" between Mary and Elizabeth; nothing in fact to make a religious peace between the Churches of the two nations hopeless. The preachers did their best to mar the prospects of union. They affronted the Queen. They insulted her ministers. They inveighed against her creed. They presented Protestantism to her in its most repellent aspect. But Maitland did not despair. The advantages of an accord on matters of religion between the two Queens and the two nations being so obvious, he believed that if Mary and Elizabeth met the difficulties might be removed. Some articles of peace, some comprehensive settlement tolerable to all reasonable men, might surely be devised. It is certain that Knox, who hated Prelacy nearly as hotly as he hated Popery, did not view the scheme with a friendly eye; and Cecil, holding that Mary, CatholicProtestant or Protestant-Catholic, would always be a menace to Elizabeth, was secretly hostile. The interview never took place; and as time wore on, the differences which had once been

capable of peaceful adjustment, were emphasised and accentuated.

Mary was not invited on her return to ratify the proceedings of the Parliament which had abolished the ancient Church. She had refused to do so before she left France; the Parliament of 1560, she alleged, had neither been lawfully convened nor lawfully constituted. A compromise that left matters open for any subsequent change of circumstances was agreed to with apparent unanimity. The proclamation of 25th August 1561 was probably drawn by Maitland. It provided that the form of religion presently "standing" should in the meantime be continued. The final settlement was purposely delayed. The proclamation was substantially a declaration that the whole religious state was provisional. This was exactly what Maitland in the interests of a comprehensive pacification must have desired. There was at least no legislative bar to union; a truce had been proclaimed; and when passion had cooled and prejudices had been conciliated, union might come.

I am aware that this view of Maitland's ecclesiastical policy is somewhat unusual. But I believe it to be in accordance with the facts which have been recorded, not, it may be, by ecclesiastical historians, but by contemporary writers whose fairness and impartiality are undoubted.

VOL. II.

B

To a consecutive narrative of these facts the incidents of the struggle between Maitland's policy of peace and Knox's policy of exasperation-I must now address myself.

The objects then of Maitland's policy were: (1) To prevent Scottish Protestantism from assuming a form that would make an accord with Elizabeth and English Protestantism impossible. (2) To bring the Queens together, with the view of concluding a comprehensive religious peace between the two nations on a reasonable basis.

(3) To dissuade the preachers from presenting such a caricature of Protestantism to Mary as might confirm her attachment to Catholicism and increase the difficulties of an accord. (4) To restrain the extravagant pretensions of the preachers, whose doctrines of spiritual independence and spiritual supremacy were incompatible, in his view, with the maintenance of civil authority and orderly government.

1. It is known that the Confession of Faith, before it was ratified by the Estates, had been submitted to Maitland and the Lord James for revision. They had together gone over it; they had modified the severity of its language; and they had deleted one whole chapter on the duty of subjects to the civil power—which would certainly have proved distasteful to Elizabeth. But Maitland and Randolph were obviously

extremely doubtful whether even the revised version would be acceptable at Westminster. "If my poor advice might have been heard," the English envoy was careful to explain to Cecil, "touching the Confession of Faith, it should not so soon have come into the light. God hath sent it better success for the confirmation thereof than was looked for; it passed men's expectations to see it pass in such sort as it did. Before that it was published or many words spoken of it, it was presented unto certain of the lords to see their judgment. It was committed unto the Lord of Lethington and the Sub-Prior to be examined. Though they could not reprove the doctrine, yet did they mitigate the austerity of many words and sentences which sounded to proceed rather of some evil conceived opinion than of any sound judgment. author of the work had also put in his treatise a title or chapter of the obedience or disobedience that subjects owe unto their magistrates, that contained little less matter in few words than hath been otherwise written more at large. The surveyors of this work thought it to be an unfit matter to be treated at that time, and so gave their advice to have it out."1 A week later Maitland wrote to Cecil to the same effect.

1 Randolph to Cecil, 7th September 1560.

The

It was not yet too late, he added, to amend any article that Elizabeth might hold to be amiss. "If there be anything in the Confession of our Faith which you mislike, I would be glad to know it, that upon the advertisement it may rather be changed (if the matter will so permit), or at least in some thing qualified, to the contentation of those who otherways might be offended."1 The Confession, however, was a difficult work to recast; it hung together with logical tenacity; if one brick was dislodged, the whole structure might be imperilled. Granting the fundamental assumption of its compilers, there was no road by which the conclusion at which they arrived-" And therefore we utterly abhor the blasphemy of them that affirm that men who live according to equitie and justice shall be saved "2-could be avoided. The Scottish Pharisee who held that he was not as other men-" we are the only part of your people that truly fear God"-was proud of his isolation.

1 Maitland to Cecil, 13th Sep- fore men; but the justification tember 1560. which St Paul speaks of justifies us before God. And that all, yea the best of our good works, are but sins before God."-Mackenzie's Writers of the Scottish Nation, iii. 147. 3 Supplication of July 1565. Keith, iii. 113.

2 "Henry Balnares, in his book upon Justification, affirms, That the justification spoken of by St James is different from that spoken of by St Paul; for the justification by good works which St James speaks of only justifies us be