atter of doctrine; in conduct they were the most avaricious, bloody, and
treacherous of all the generations which had banded, revelled, robbed,
and betrayed in Scotland.

There is a point in this matter of the Kirk's claim to the patrimony of
the old Church which perhaps is generally misunderstood. That point is
luminous as regards the absolute disinterestedness of Knox and his
companions, both in respect to themselves and their fellow-preachers. The
Book of Discipline contains a sentence already quoted, conceived in what
we may justly style a chivalrous contempt of wealth. "Your Honours may
easily understand _that we speak not now for ourselves_, but in favour of
the Poor, and the labourers defrauded . . . " Not having observed a
point which "their Honours" were not the men to "understand easily,"
Father Pollen writes, "the new preachers were loudly _claiming for
themselves_ the property of the rivals whom they had displaced." {186}
For themselves they were claiming a few merks, and a few bolls of meal, a
decent subsistence. Mr. Taylor Innes points out that when, just before
Darnley's murder, Mary offered "a considerable sum for the maintenance of
the ministers," Knox and others said that, for their sustentation, they
"craved of the auditors the things that were necessary, as of duty the
pastors might justly crave of their flock. The General Assembly accepted
the Queen's gift, but only of necessity; it was by their flock that they
ought to be sustained. To take from others contrary to their will, whom
they serve not, they judge it not their duty, nor yet reasonable."

Among other things the preachers, who were left with a hard struggle for
bare existence, introduced a rule of honour scarcely known to the barons
and nobles, except to the bold Buccleuch who rejected an English pension
from Henry VIII., with a sympathetic explosion of strong language. The
preachers would not take gifts from England, even when offered by the
supporters of their own line of policy.

Knox's failure in his admirable attempt to secure the wealth of the old
Church for national purposes was, as it happened, the secular salvation
of the Kirk. Neither Catholicism nor Anglicanism could be fully
introduced while the barons and nobles held the tithes and lands of the
ancient Church. Possessing the wealth necessary to a Catholic or
Anglican establishment, they were resolutely determined to cling to it,
and oppose any Church except that whic