The skull and portraits of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and their bearing on the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S.; with frontispiece, forty-five plates, four figures in the text and six tissues of cranial contours.

  • Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
Date:
[1928]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The skull and portraits of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and their bearing on the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S.; with frontispiece, forty-five plates, four figures in the text and six tissues of cranial contours. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion of Moray was a judgment of God because he had not fulfilled God’s will*, which meant, of course, the dictates of Knox. That Knox considered religious assassination commendable is easily demon¬ strated. He described the murder of Cardinal Beaton as “ the godly act of James Melvinef,” nor did he hesitate to accept the post of chaplain to the assassins and their friends in the deceased Cardinal’s captured castle of St Andrews. Of another religious murder he wrote, “God...had stricken that bloody tyrant the Duke of Guise, which somewhat broke the fard [violence] of our Queen for a season ” (History of the Reformation, Edn. 1831, p. 291). For John Knox the public fast of the Kirk devised by him for avoiding the scourge of God had resulted in the assassination of the villain Rizzio, after which manner “ the noblemen were relieved of their trouble, and restored to their places and rooms, and likewise the church reformed ; and all that professed the evangel within this realm, after fasting and prayer, were delivered and freed from the apparent dangers, which were like to have fallen upon them ” (Ibid. pp. 340—1, 344). It is needless to say that it was the influence of John Knox which carried the Act against the celebration of mass in 1560. No one was to “ say nor yet hear mass, nor be present thereat, under the pain and con¬ fiscation of all their goods, and punishing of their bodies at the discretion of the magistrates,...for the first fault; banishing the realm for the second fault; and justi¬ fying for the death, for the third fault];” (Ibid. p. 221). It was under this Act that Knox would have punished Jezebel the queen for her “ vile filthiness and damnable idolatry,”i.e. for hearing the mass (Ibid. pp. 293—308). According to Knox,“Idolatry ought not only to be suppressed, but the idolater to die the death unless we will accuse God.” It was idle for Lethington to tell him that he reasoned “ as though the Queen would become an enemy to our religion, that she should persecute and put innocent men to death which I am assured she never thought nor never will do” (Ibid. p. 311). Of a certainty Maitland spoke truly when he said to Knox in * Cf. Robert Semple’s address to the Regent Morton: Quhairfor put God the powar in your hand? Spair neuer Agag for na brybe of geir. Quhat come of Saull, with his fatt oxin thair? Ga reid the Bybill, it will sone declair. My Lord of Murray was degradit sone For not fulfiling of the Lordis desyre. (Dalyell’s Scottish Poems of the Sixteenth Century, pp. 297—8, Edinburgh. Sege of Edinburgh Castel.) t This is the marginal note of Knox in his History, first published in 1585. It is accepted by Dr Mackay as Knox’s own opinion. Some earlier authors have questioned it, but Knox’s account of the murder, as if it were a merry jest, especially in regard to the disposal of the corpse, is fully adequate to illustrate Knox’s view. His approval of the assassination is as little open to doubt as his approval in the case of Rizzio’s, or indeed Beaton’s approval in the case of Wishart’s judicial murder. Both religious parties were using all available weapons according to the morality of their age. And Wishart appears to have been as anxious to assassinate the Cardinal as the latter was to murder judicially his would-be assassin. The endeavour to “duplicate” Wishart has not so far been successful, and Mackay’s arguments do not appear of any real validity against the State Papers and the case as put by Burton, History of Scotland, Yol. ni. pp. 258—261. J This Act was no dead letter.