‘That Every Man May Knaw’: Reformation and Rhetoric in the Works of Sir David Lyndsay

Abstract

David Lyndsay's writings, while often lashing the corruption of the Scottish Catholic clergy, nonetheless engage subtly with the politics of pre-Reformation Scotland. Lyndsay's attacks on the clergy are not so much religiously motivated as based on conflict between the Scottish Church and the secular authorities. Lyndsay's writings repeatedly urge measures to reduce the Church's wealth and political influence, and shift power towards the Crown and the nobility (and, later, the Parliament). But this underlying political motive is pursued via social, moral and religious arguments, expressed with considerable rhetorical sensitivity to their effects on different audiences. Lyndsay's writing is consequently multi-layered in voice and significance, opening in different ways for different readerships, addressing both prince and pauper, often simultaneously. The nuanced interaction, on both a formal and thematic level, of different socio-political interests, moral values and religious debates, illustrates the complex negotiations that characterize the political culture of pre-Reformation Scotland.