THE ARCHBISHOPS OF ST. ANDRE WS.*
WE have received the first volume of this work. We can only notice it shortly because it is a first volume and because we hope to notice its successors. When these have appeared, the authors will have every claim to be complimented upon a great and authoritative work. The period with which it will deal—Scotland in the century before the Reformation—has long been regarded as the most difficult and obscure in the history of Scotland. The history of the State at that time is the history of the Church, and, as the authors point out, an adequate chapter on Scotland and her Church of that period could only be founded on a number of special investigations, and one of these investigations must be the history of the Archbishops. The volume before us bears the signs of this special investigation on every page, and its real value cannot be justly appreciated unless one has a good knowledge of the "literary tradition" of John Knox and of George Buchanan. We are bound to say that Buchanan's estimate of Archbishop Graham, and consequently of Arch- bishop Schevez, always appeared to us to be unsatisfactory, and the eminently scientific and laborious research (no official record or MS. seems to have been missed) of Professor Herkless and Mr. Hannay proves conclusively, as it has been proved very often of late in other matters,. that Buchanan was not a judicial writer of history.
In their opening pages the authors tell very succinctly of the determination with which the Bishops and clergy of Scotland resisted all attempts to make Scotland an ecclesiastical appanage of England, disavowing the jurisdiction of the See of York or Canterbury. It is difficult to appreciate the fact that it was not till near the close of the fifteenth century that Scotland realised " the desire of centuries " and numbered an Archbishop among her ecclesiastics, and that the first Arch- bishop was not the "Blessed Kennedy," but his nephew Patrick Graham, a man of the Royal line and egregie beneficiatus. From his youth up, everything that patronage and means could do was done for him. Jobbery that appears glaring in an age that was tainted with it punctuates his life from his University days in his early " teens," through his life in high places, whether he was visiting the Papal city to traffic in benefices in Scotland (the highest bidder was the most desirable occupant), or indulged his zeal for things financial "in the old grey city by the sea," till in disgrace he heard himself described in the Papal judgment upon him as " hereticum, scismaticum, falsarium, simoniacum et irregularem, blasphemum et excommunicatum, perjurum." This was the man who got St. Andrews raised to be the metropolitan city of Scotland. Despite what Buchanan says, it was from no high motives that he proceeded to Rome to effect this. He went without the consent of the King or the nobles, and was regarded openly for this and other offences as a traitor. He falsified Papal letters, described himself as a Legate a latere, and dissipated the goods of the Church and archiepiscopal table. The charitable view to take of him is that he was a " poor lunatic." How lamentably fallible as an historian Buchanan appears when he attempts to describe him as inferior to none of his time in learning and character, as "alone staying the declining Church." There is no reason at all to suppose that William Schevez, his successor, was his "enemy in chief," and for a selfish purpose sought to overthrow him.
The career of Schevez was a most remarkable one. With no birth or influence, but with a good education, he " passed within four years from the humble work of a keeper of the King's wardrobe, and the more honourable functions of a Court Physician, to the duties of an archdeacon and the dignity of an archbishop." Professor Herkless and Mr. Hannay, somewhat unreasonably perhaps, fail to find in him much more than " a vigilant caretaker of the privileges of his office" ; a man with no genius or intellectual strength. We had always looked upon Schevez with considerable admiration because of the way in which he, at great personal sacrifice, stood by the King who had befriended him when the usurper Albany threw that Monarch " upon evil days." No doubt he was a vain man. He seems to have bad a medal struck, showing his bust on the one side, in his pride, because thotigh, after a struggle, Blackader was made the first Archbishop of
• The Archbishops of St. Andsers. By Professor Ilerkless and Robert K. Hannay. Vol. I. Loudon : W. Blackwood and Sons. [7s. 6d. net.]
Glasgow, he was not allowed to have the primatial or legatine rank which the Archbishop of St. Andrews had. It is worthy of note that he was a great lover of books (some of his are among the most valued possessions of the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh), and that he was probably the first to introduce the use of book-stamps into Scotland.
" No scandal," we are told, " could arise in holy things in the base days of Alexander VI." In Scotland at the time it was no novelty to see benefices conferred on boys, and the third Archbishop of St. Andrews was a Prince of the reigning house (James Stewart, Duke of Ross), "a prelate too young for any duty save the collection of rents !" He died when he was twenty-eight, and he is but a name. The probable, indeed the only, explanation of his advancement was the desire of his reigning 'brother to avoid rivalry. He knew well that the Scottish people would not tolerate a "priest- King." The fourth Archbishop (Alexander Stewart) was a mere boy, and had " not even the grace of legitimacy attaching to his birth." These "accidents " did not matter then, though they help to show us now the spiritual degrada- tion of the Church. Nothing much is known of his life, except that he used to beat, and be beaten now and again by, his father at cards, and was a youth of great promise. Erasmus was his tutor, and the great scholar called him " a disciple of the Muses and of Christ." Dean Stanley, it will be remembered, described him, without much reason, as the " Young Marcellus of the Scottish Church." To his credit, be it said, he "helped St. Andrews University," augmenting the Professors' salaries and endowing the College. By the side of his father, and amid the flower of Scotland's noblemen, he fell at Flodden before he attained the aetas legitima. We await with pleasure the successors to this scholarly and intensely interesting volume.
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