John Knox And The Reformation

Andrew Lang

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9783849606947
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

This work of the well-known historian and man-of-letters, Mr. Andrew Lang, is not a biography at all; it is a controversial pamphlet of large size, the thesis of which is a quotation from ' The Diurnal' under the date of Knox's death: ' John Knox, minister, deceased, who had, as was alleged, the most part of the blame of all the sorrows of Scotland since the slaughter of the late Cardinal.' From the beginning to the end of his book, Mr. Lang employs all the resources of his literary art, irony, denunciation, special pleading, to discredit the great Reformer. He attributes to him the principles of a Macchiavelli, and a prudence that led him to shun dangers to himself however ready he might be to denounce others who showed like prudence. He accuses Knox of numberless misstatements in his History, extending even to the perversion of the facts of history to justify his acts and those of his party. On nearly every page is a fling at Knox, the following being an example: ' Knox, as to the doctrine of " killing no murder, " was a man of his time. But Knox, in telling the story of a murder which he approves, unhappily displays a glee unbecoming a reformer of the Church of Him who blamed St. Peter for his recourse to the sword. The very essence of Christianity is cast to the winds when Knox utters his laughter over the murders or misfortunes of his opponents, yielding " to the strong propensity which he felt to indulge his vein of humour." Other good men rejoiced in the murder of an enemy, but Knox chuckled.' This is not fair play, though it be sharp writing. It is to be admitted that Mr. Lang carries us with him in many of his attacks upon the consistency and spirit of the Reformer, but he himself ' chuckles' overmuch, and allows far too little for the spirit of the time that shapes the character and thought of even its leaders and heroes.

John Knox And The Reformation

Andrew Lang

Contents:

Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

John Knox And The Reformation

Preface

Chapter I: Ancestry, Birth, Education, Environment: 1513(?)-1546

Chapter Ii: Knox, Wishart, And The Murder Of Beaton: 1545-1546

Chapter Iii: Knox In St. Andrews Castle: The Galleys: 1547-1549

Chapter Iv: Knox In England: The Black Rubric: Exile: 1549-1554

Chapter V: Exile: Appeals For A Phinehas, And A Jehu: 1554

Chapter Vi: Knox In The English Puritan Troubles At Frankfort: 1554-1555

Chapter Vii: Knox In Scotland: Lethington: Mary Of Guise: 1555-1556

Chapter Viii: Knox’s Writings From Abroad: Beginning Of The Scottish Revolution, 1556-1558

Chapter Ix: Knox On The Anabaptists: His Appeal To England: 1558-1559

Chapter X: Knox And The Scottish Revolution, 1559

Chapter Xi: Knox’s Intrigues, And His Account Of Them, 1559

Chapter Xii: Knox In The War Of The Congregation: The Regent Attacked: Her Death: Catholicism Abolished, 1559-1560

Chapter Xiii: Knox And The Book Of Discipline

Chapter Xiv: Knox And Queen Mary, 1561

Chapter Xv: Knox And Queen Mary (Continued), 1561-1564

Chapter Xvi: Knox And Queen Mary (Continued): 1563-1564

Chapter Xvii: Knox And Queen Mary (Continued), 1564-1567

Chapter Xviii: The Last Years Of Knox: 1567-1572

Appendix A: Alleged Perfidy Of Mary Of Guise

Appendix B: Forgery Procured By Mary Of Guise

Footnotes

John Knox And The Reformation, A. Lang

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

ISBN: 9783849606947

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

ANDREW LANG (1844-1912)

Biographical Sketch from "Portraits And Sketches" by Edmund Gosse

INVITED to note down some of my recollections of Andrew Lang, I find myself suspended between the sudden blow of his death and the slow development of memory, now extending in unbroken friendship over thirty-five years. The magnitude and multitude of Lang's performances, public and private, during that considerable length of time almost paralyse expression; it is difficult to know where to begin or where to stop. Just as his written works are so extremely numerous as to make a pathway through them a formidable task in bibliography, no one book standing out predominant, so his character, intellectual and moral, was full -of so many apparent inconsistencies, so many pitfalls for rash assertion, so many queer caprices of impulse, that in a whole volume of analysis, which would be tedious, one could scarcely do justice to them all. I will venture to put down, almost at haphazard, what I remember that seems to me to have been overlooked, or inexactly stated, by those who wrote, often very sympathetically, at the moment of his death, always premising that I speak rather of a Lang of from 1877 to 1890, when I saw him very frequently, than of a Lang whom younger people met chiefly in Scotland.

When he died, all the newspapers were loud in proclaiming his "versatility." But I am not sure that he was not the very opposite of versatile. I take "versatile" to mean changeable, fickle, constantly ready to alter direction with the weather-cock. The great instance of versatility in literature is Ruskin, who adopted diametrically different views of the same subject at different times of his life, and defended them with equal ardour. To be versatile seems to be unsteady, variable. But Lang was through his long career singularly unaltered; he never changed his point of view; what he liked and admired as a youth he liked and admired as an elderly man. It is true that his interests and knowledge were vividly drawn along a surprisingly large number of channels, but while there was abundance there does not seem to me to have been versatility. If a huge body of water boils up from a crater, it may pour down a dozen paths, but these will always be the same; unless there is an earthquake, new cascades will not form nor old rivulets run dry. In some authors earthquakes do take place as in Tolstoy, for instance, and in S. T. Coleridge but nothing of this kind was ever manifest in Lang, who was extraordinarily multiform, yet in his varieties strictly consistent from Oxford to the grave. As this is not generally perceived, I will take the liberty of expanding my view of his intellectual development.

To a superficial observer in late life the genius of Andrew Lang had the characteristics which we are in the habit of identifying with precocity. Yet he had not been, as a writer, precocious in his youth. One slender volume of verses represents all that he published in book-form before his thirty-fifth year. No doubt we shall learn in good time what he was doing before he flashed upon the world of journalism in all his panoply of graces, in 1876, at the close of his Merton fellowship. He was then, at all events, the finest finished product of his age, with the bright armour of Oxford burnished on his body to such a brilliance that humdrum eyes could hardly bear the radiance of it. Of the terms behind, of the fifteen years then dividing him from St. Andrews, we know as yet but little; they were years of insatiable acquirement, incessant reading, and talking, and observing gay preparation for a life to be devoted, as no other life in our time has been, to the stimulation of other people's observation and talk and reading. There was no cloistered virtue about the bright and petulant Merton don. He was already flouting and jesting, laughing with Ariosto in the sunshine, performing with a snap of his fingers tasks which might break the back of a pedant, and concealing under an affectation of carelessness a literary ambition which knew no definite bounds.

In those days, and when he appeared for the first time in London, the poet was paramount in him. Jowett is said to have predicted that he would be greatly famous in this line, but I know not what evidence Jowett had before him. Unless I am much mistaken, it was not until Lang left Balliol that his peculiar bent became obvious. Up to that time he had been a promiscuous browser upon books, much occupied, moreover, in the struggle with ancient Greek, and immersed in Aristotle and Homer. But in the early days of his settlement at Merton he began to concentrate his powers, and I think there were certain influences which were instant and far-reaching. Among them one was pre-eminent. When Andrew Lang came up from St. Andrews he had found Matthew Arnold occupying the ancient chair of poetry at Oxford. He was a listener at some at least of the famous lectures which, in 1865, were collected as "Essays in Criticism"; while one of his latest experiences as a Balliol undergraduate was hearing Matthew Arnold lecture on the study of Celtic literature. His conscience was profoundly stirred by "Culture and Anarchy" (1869); his sense of prose-form largely determined by "Friendship's Garland" (1871). I have no hesitation in saying that the teaching and example of Matthew Arnold prevailed over all other Oxford influences upon the intellectual nature of Lang, while, although I thi...

Table of contents

• ANDREW LANG (1844-1912)