The Reformation in Scotland

Edinburgh Castle

Scotland was, at the beginning of the 16th Cent, a wild, poor nation ruled by the laws of feudal anarchy. Every king of Scotland who had ruled in the last century had met a violent death, and none had survived beyond the age of 42.¹ When they managed to rule at all, they did so only by the goodwill of the local nobilities, and hostilities among the clans remain a reality of life. Few Europeans would have difficulty believing that God had made the Scots, as their own Lowlanders said about their Highlander compatriots, out of a lump of horse manure. In 1488 James IV succeeded to the throne and soon made himself a name for himself and for Scotland worthy at last of international respectability and diplomacy. He built a navy to be reckoned with, engaged in international affairs, helping the King of Denmark in his dispute with the Swedes as well as arbitrating in the quarrels of German princes. He even began preparations to make war against the Turks who were harassing eastern Europe. His appetite for raiding the northern realms of England was so disturbing, Henry VII entered into a long process of negotiation and eventually married his daugther (and sister of Henry VIII) Margaret, to him in 1503. In this way the ground was prepared for a future King James of Scotland to qualify for inheriting the English throne almost exactly a century later and lend his name to the most famous English Bible ever published.

In 1513 England went to war against the French. As an ally of the French and in an attempt to distract Henry VIII, James IV invaded England with one of the largest army in Scottish history. Their main troops being engaged in France, England had only a reserve army to face the Scots, which was both inferior in numbers and equipment.

The Scottish host of at least 20,000 men was annihilated ... James's magnificent Flemish cannon, which had been dragged to the battlefield by 356 oxen and more than 150 soldiers, were wrongly sighted, and fired harmlessly over the heads of the enemy, while the smaller English guns and the well-trained English archers broke up the Scottish formation. The Scots then took off their shoes and charged headlong, led by James himself. Their long spears, nearly 18 feet in lenght, should have given them the advantage in hand-to-hand combat against the English foot with their short bills; but the English side-stepped the charging Scots, cut through the wooden shafts of the spears with their bills, and then massacred their disarmed enemies. James IV, the two archbishops, 12 of Scotland's 20 earls and 13 of her 32 lords, and 10,000 men, half of the total Scottish army, were killed, leaving an 18-months-old king, and a nobility consisting largely of children. The English lost only 1,5000 men.²

The battle of Flodden demonstrated that a king with large personality does not necessary make a great nation. The nation quickly descended into brutal lawlessness and became but a pawn in the hands of England and France.

In the palace, Margaret, with the backing of England, fought John Stewart, a French relative of the Scottish king, as to who should be Regent to the juvenile King James V. Stewart won the fight, and Margaret was forced to return to England, there to care, instead, for his brother Henry VIII's many lodges. Meanwhile, in the market places, political assassinations and the raw brute of force decided the day. Fights broke out in parliament to settle debates. Convicts were openly snatched from the courts to prevent their conviction. Murders were commonplace, even of pregnant women and their unborn infants. John Knox, born in the year James IV fell in battle, or the year after,³ survived the brutalities of these cruel days. He would grow up to become the captain of the Reformation in Scotland.

Footnotes

1. J. Ridley, John Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 8.

2. Ibid, 10.

3. The date of Knox's birth is traditionally accepted as 1505. This was never challenged until 1905 when Hay Fleming published his article in The Scotsman on the eve of the quatercentanary celebration of Knox's birth. Ibid, 531-534. Even if Knox was born in 1505, the point made above remains valid; surviving the "brutalities of these cruel days" would only have been marginally improved and remained just as harrowing.