A. LANG.

8 Gibson Place, St. Andrews.




CHAPTER I: ANCESTRY, BIRTH, EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT: 1513(?)-1546


"November 24, 1572.

"John Knox, minister, deceased, who had, as was alleged, the most part of
the blame of all the sorrows of Scotland since the slaughter of the late
Cardinal."

It is thus that the decent burgess who, in 1572, kept The Diurnal of such
daily events as he deemed important, cautiously records the death of the
great Scottish Reformer. The sorrows, the "cumber" of which Knox was
"alleged" to bear the blame, did not end with his death. They persisted
in the conspiracies and rebellions of the earlier years of James VI.;
they smouldered through the later part of his time; they broke into far
spreading flame at the touch of the Covenant; they blazed at "dark
Worcester and bloody Dunbar"; at Preston fight, and the sack of Dundee by
Monk; they included the Cromwellian conquest of Scotland, and the shame
and misery of the Restoration; to trace them down to our own age would be
invidious.

It is with the "alleged" author of the Sorrows, with his life, works, and
ideas that we are concerned.