"At midnight mirke thay [the persecutors] will us take, And into prison will us fling, There mon we ly quhile [i.e., till] we forsake The name of God, quhilk is our king. "Then faggots man we burne or beir, Or to the deid they will us bring: It does them gude to do us deir, And to confusion us down thring." Wedderburne's Gude and Godly Ballates. "But hald you at my Testment fast, And be not quite of them aghast, INTRODUCTION. ERTILE as is the field of the Reformation of the sixteenth century in Scotland in materials of great and enduring interest, it presents only a few scattered gleanings in regard to the reformed ladies. This poverty of materials arises mainly from two causesfrom the defective state of female education in Scotland at that period, and from the fact that the ladies attached to the Reformation in Scotland were not called, to any great extent, to suffer persecution and martyrdom. At the time of the Reformation, and even before it, the ladies of Italy, Spain, France, and England, enjoyed distinguished advantages of mental culture. The dispersion of the Greeks, consequent upon the occupation of Constantinople by the Turks, about the year 1443, had the happiest effects upon the revival of letters in these countries. Italy, which, during the darkest periods of Papal domination, had preserved a degree of refinement and knowledge to which the other nations of Europe were strangers, was the first to experience this intellectual resuscitation. In that country the learned Greek refugees, upon the overthrow of their empire, found an asylum; and bringing with them the works of their ancient orators, poets, and historians, they taught these models of eloquence and taste to the Italian scholars, who studied them with enthusiastic ardour; and these studies, by refining their taste, increased their relish for the classic writings of their own scarcely less illustrious authors of antiquity. Similar were the advantages derived by Spain, France, and England, from the destruction of the Constantinopolitan empire. Their students or learned men, resorting to Italy, were instructed in the Greek language by some of the most illustrious Greek refugees; they besides acquired a pure Latin style under the first Italian masters; and returning home, they industriously laboured to introduce among their countrymen a taste for the Greek and Roman classics, in opposition to the scholastic and barbarous systems of education then prevalent. So strong was the passion for the cultivation of classical literature in these countries, that the daughters of the nobility and gentry were carefully taught the Greek and Roman languages under skilful masters, and in these languages many of them attained to great proficiency. But Scotland was somewhat later in deriving these advantages; and when Scotsmen who had travelled in Italy, Germany, and England, to acquire the learning not to be obtained in their own country, on returning home, introduced the cultivation of elegant and humanizing literature, the extension of a high education to the daughters of Scotland, even to those of rank, was little thought of. Hence in the history of the Scottish Reformation we have no ladies who can vie in learning and accomplishments with Renée of Ferrara, Olympia Morata, Margaret of Valois, Katharine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, the Ladies Seymour, and the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke. Had the Scottish ladies enjoyed opportunities of cultivating their minds similar to those enjoyed by these illus trious ladies, numbers of them would, doubtless, have left behind them lasting traces of their genius and talents; and there would not have been wanting, among the Scottish Reformers, enough of learned gallantry to do justice to their merits. Henry VIII, depraved as he became when advanced in life, patronized learning in his early days, and was ambitious to bestow upon his daughters a finished education; an example which the nobility and gentry emulously followed. Had the Scottish throne been filled by a sovereign with a rising family of daughters, of whose mental culture he was equally solicitous, his example would, no doubt, have had a similar effect upon the Scottish nobility, gentry, and people. The other cause of the scantiness of our information respecting the ladies attached to the Reformation in Scotland, is the circumstance that Popish persecutors were not permitted, in the providence of God, to visit them, in very many instances, with the penalties of heresy. The most powerful of the Scottish nobility, and ultimately the Scottish government itself, having early become favourable to the Reformation, the Scottish Popish priesthood was soon deprived of the power of wielding the sword of the state for the extermination of heretics. It was different in most of the other countries of Europe where the Reformation took footing. In England, for example, though Henry cast off the Papal supremacy, yet still continuing in all other respects a dogmatic Papist, he ceased not to persecute the Reformers; and his bigoted, fanatical daughter, Mary, offered them up in whole hecatombs to the Roman Moloch. Thus England furnishes a much more numerous list of martyrs, of both sexes, for the reformed sentiments than Scotland, the number of whose martyrs under Popery is comparatively small. In the 17th century, the intrepidity of the ladies of Scotland prompting them to become fearless confessors and devoted martyrs, was conspicuous. Sir Walter Scott, in his Old Mortality, describing the resolute firmness of the Scottish character during the persecution of Charles II. and James VII., observes-and the observation applies to the tender as well as to the hardier sex, as is evident from numerous examples in the history of that period-" It seems akin to the native sycamore of their hills, which scorns to be biased in its mode of growth, even by the influence of the prevailing wind, but shooting its branches with equal boldness in every direction, shows no weather-side to the storm, and may be broken, but can never be bended." And if the examples of the heroism of the Scottish ladies who had embraced. the reformed sentiments, are less |