John Knox and the Reformation

Mary asking if he denied her “just authority,” Knox said that he was as well content to live under her as Paul under Nero. This, again, can hardly be called an agreeable historical parallel! Knox hoped that he would not hurt her or her authority “so long as ye defile not your hands with the blood of the saints of God,” as if Mary was panting to distinguish herself in that way. His hope was unfulfilled. No “saints” suffered, but he ceased not to trouble.

Knox also said that if he had wanted “to trouble your estate because you are a woman, I might have chosen a time more convenient for that purpose than I can do now, when your own presence is in the realm.” He had, in fact, chosen the convenient time in his letter to Cecil, already quoted (July 19, 1559), but he had not succeeded in his plan. He said that nobody could prove that the question of discarding Mary, on the ground of her sex, “was at any time moved in public or in secret.” Nobody could prove it, for nobody could publish his letter to Cecil. Probably he had this in his mind. He did not say that the thing had not happened, only that “he was assured that neither Protestant nor papist shall be able to prove that any such question was at any time moved, either in public or in secret.” [219 - Knox, ii. 279, 280.]

He denied that he had caused sedition in England, nor do we know what Mary meant by this charge. His appeals, from abroad, to a Phinehas or Jehu had not been answered. As to magic, he always preached against the practice.

Mary then said that Knox persuaded the people to use religion not allowed by their princes. He justified himself by biblical precedents, to which she replied that Daniel and Abraham did not resort to the sword. They had not the chance, he answered, adding that subjects might resist a prince who exceeded his bounds, as sons may confine a maniac father.

The Queen was long silent, and then said, “I perceive my subjects shall obey you and not me.” Knox said that all should be subject unto God and His Church; and Mary frankly replied, “I will defend the Church of Rome, for I think that it is the true Church of God.” She could not defend it! Knox answered with his wonted urbanity, that the Church of Rome was a harlot, addicted to “all kinds of fornication.”

He was so accustomed to this sort of rhetoric that he did not deem it out of place on this occasion. His admirers, familiar with his style, forget its necessary effect on “a young princess unpersuaded,” as Lethington put it. Mary said that her conscience was otherwise minded, but Knox knew that all consciences of “man or angel” were wrong which did not agree with his own. The Queen had to confess that in argument as to the unscriptural character of the Mass, he was “owre sair” for her. He said that he wished she would “hear the matter reasoned to the end.” She may have desired that very thing: “Ye may get that sooner than ye believe,” she said; but Knox expressed his disbelief that he would ever get it. Papists would never argue except when “they were both judge and party.” Knox himself never answered Ninian Winzet, who, while printing his polemic, was sought for by the police of the period, and just managed to escape.

There was, however, a champion who, on November 19, challenged Knox and the other preachers to a discussion, either orally or by interchange of letters. This was Mary’s own chaplain, René Benoit. Mary probably knew that he was about to offer to meet “the most learned John Knox and other most erudite men, called ministers”; it is thus that René addresses them in his “Epistle” of November 19.

He implores them not to be led into heresy by love of popularity or of wealth; neither of which advantages the preachers enjoyed, for they were detested by loose livers, and were nearly starved. Benoit’s little challenge, or rather request for discussion, is a model of courtesy. Knox did not meet him in argument, as far as we are aware; but in 1562, Fergusson, minister of Dunfermline, replied in a tract full of scurrility. One quite unmentionable word occurs, and “impudent lie,” “impudent and shameless shavelings,” “Baal’s chaplains that eat at Jezebel’s table,” “pestilent papistry,” “abominable mass,” “idol Bishops,” “we Christians and you Papists,” and parallels between Benoit and “an idolatrous priest of Bethel,” between Mary and Jezebel are among the amenities of this meek servant of Christ in Dunfermline.

Benoit presently returned to France, and later was confessor to Henri IV. The discussion which Mary anticipated never occurred, though her champion was ready. Knox does not refer to this affair in his “History,” as far as I am aware. [220 - Tracts by David Fergusson, Bannatyne Club, 1860.] Was René the priest whom the brethren menaced and occasionally assaulted?

Considering her chaplain’s offer, it seems not unlikely that Mary was ready to listen to reasoning, but to call the Pope “Antichrist,” and the Church “a harlot,” is not argument. Knox ended his discourse by wishing the Queen as blessed in Scotland as Deborah was in Israel. The mere fact that Mary spoke with him “makes the Papists doubt what shall come of the world,” [221 - Bain, i. 551, 552.] says Randolph; and indeed nobody knows what possibly might have come, had Knox been sweetly reasonable. But he told his friends that, if he was not mistaken, she had “a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth.” She showed none of these qualities in the conversation as described by himself; but her part in it is mainly that of a listener who returns not railing with railing.

Knox was going about to destroy the scheme of les politiques, Randolph, Lethington, and the Lord James. They desired peace and amity with England, and the two Scots, at least, hoped to secure these as the Cardinal Guise did, by Mary’s renouncing all present claim to the English throne, in return for recognition as heir, if Elizabeth died without issue. Elizabeth, as we know her, would never have granted these terms, but Mary’s ministers, Lethington then in England, Lord James at home, tried to hope. [222 - Lord James to Lord Robert Dudley, October 7, 1561. Bain, i. 557, 558. Lethington’s account of his reasonings with Elizabeth is not very hopeful. Pollen, “Queen Mary’s Letter to Guise,” Scot. Hist. Soc., 38-45.] Lord James had heard Mary’s outburst to Knox about defending her own insulted Church, but he was not nervously afraid that she would take to dipping her hands in the blood of the saints. Neither he nor Lethington could revert to the old faith; they had pecuniary reasons, as well as convictions, which made that impossible.

Lethington, returned to Edinburgh (October 25), spoke his mind to Cecil. “The Queen behaves herself.. as reasonably as we can require: if anything be amiss the fault is rather in ourselves. You know the vehemency of Mr. Knox’s spirit which cannot be bridled, and yet doth utter sometimes such sentences as cannot easily be digested by a weak stomach. I would wish he should deal with her more gently, being a young princess unpersuaded… Surely in her comporting with him she declares a wisdom far exceeding her age.” [223 - Bain, i. 565.] Vituperation is not argument, and gentleness is not unchristian. St. Paul did not revile the gods of Felix and Festus.

But, prior to these utterances of October, the brethren had been baiting Mary. On her public entry (which Knox misdates by a month) her idolatry was rebuked by a pageant of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Huntly managed to stop a burning in effigy of a priest at the Mass. They never could cease from insulting the Queen in the tenderest point. The magistrates next coupled “mess-mongers” with notorious drunkards and adulterers, “and such filthy persons,” in a proclamation, so the Provost and Bailies were “warded” (Knox says) in the Tolbooth. Knox blamed Lethington and Lord James, in a letter to Cecil; [224 - Knox, vi. 131, 132; ii. 289.] in his “History” he says, “God be merciful to some of our own.” [225 - The proclamation against “all monks, friars, priests, nuns, adulterers, fornicators, and all such filthy persons,” was of October 2. On October 5 the Queen bade the council and community of the town to meet in the Tolbooth, depose the Provost and Bailies, and elect others. On October 8 the order was carried out, and protests were put in. A note from Lethington was received, containing three names, out of which the Queen commanded that one must be Provost. The Council “thought good to pass to her Grace,” show that they had already made their election, and await her pleasure. “Jezebel’s letter and wicked will is obeyed as law,” says Knox. —Extracts from Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 126, 127.]

The Queen herself, as a Papist, was clearly insulted in the proclamation. Moray and Lethington, the latter touched by her “readiness to hear,” and her gentleness in the face of Protestant brutalities; the former, perhaps, lured by the hope of obtaining, as the price of his alliance, the earldom of Moray, were by the end of October still attempting to secure amity between her and Elizabeth, and to hope for the best, rather than drive the Queen wild by eternal taunts and menaces. The preachers denounced her rites at Hallowmass (All Saints), and a servant of her brother, Lord Robert, beat a priest; but men actually doubted whether subjects might interfere between the Queen and her religion. There was a discussion on this point between the preachers and the nobles, and the Church in Geneva (Calvin) was to be consulted. Knox offered to write, but Lethington said that he would write, as much stood on the “information”; that is, on the manner of stating the question. Lethington did not know, and Knox does not tell us in his “History” that he had himself, a week earlier, put the matter before Calvin in his own way. Even Lord James, he says to Calvin, though the Abdiel of godliness, “is afraid to overthrow that idol by violence” —idolum illud missalicum. [226 - Knox, vi. 133-135. Corp. Refor., xlvii. 74.]

Knox’s letter to Calvin represents the Queen as alleging that he has already answered the question, declaring that Knox’s party has no right to interfere with the Royal mass. This rumour Knox disbelieves. He adds that Arran would have written, but was absent.

Apparently Arran did write to Calvin, anonymously, and dating from London, November 18, 1561. The letter, really from Scotland, is in French. The writer acknowledges the receipt, about August 20, of an encouraging epistle from Calvin. He repeats Knox’s statements, in the main, and presses for a speedy reply. He says that he goes seldom to Court, both on account of “that idol,” and because “sobriety and virtue” have been exiled. [227 - Corp. Refor., xlvii. 114, 115.] As Arran himself “is known to have had company of a good handsome wench, a merchant’s daughter,” which led to a riot with Bothwell, described by Randolph (December 27, 1561), his own “virtue and sobriety” are not conspicuous. [228 - Bain, i. 582, 583.] He was in Edinburgh on November 15-19, and the London date of his anonymous letter is a blind. [229 - Ibid., i. 491. Randolph to Cecil.]

It does not appear that Calvin replied to Knox, and to the anonymous correspondent, in whom I venture to detect Arran; or, if he answered, his letter was probably unfavourable to Knox, as we shall argue when the subject later presents itself.

Finally – “the votes of the Lords prevailed against the ministers”; the Queen was allowed her Mass, but Lethington, a minister of the Queen, did not consult a foreigner as to the rights of her subjects against her creed.

The lenity of Lord James was of sudden growth. At Stirling he and Argyll had gallantly caused the priests to leave the choir “with broken heads and bloody ears,” the Queen weeping. So Randolph reported to Cecil (September 24).

Why her brother, foremost to insult Mary and her faith, unless Randolph errs, in September, took her part in a few weeks, we do not know. At Perth, Mary was again offended, and suffered in health by reason of the pageants; “they did too plainly condemn the errors of the world… I hear she is troubled with such sudden passions after any great unkindness or grief of mind,” says Randolph. She was seldom free from such godly chastisements. At Perth, however, some one gave her a cross of five diamonds with pendant pearls.

Meanwhile the statesmen did not obey the Ministers as men ought to obey God: a claim not easily granted by carnal politicians.

CHAPTER XV: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued), 1561-1564

Had Mary been a mere high-tempered and high-spirited girl, easily harmed in health by insults to herself and her creed, she might now have turned for support to Huntly, Cassilis, Montrose, and the other Earls who were Catholic or “unpersuaded.” Her great-grandson, Charles II., when as young as she now was, did make the “Start” – the schoolboy attempt to run away from the Presbyterians to the loyalists of the North. But Mary had more self-control.

The artful Randolph found himself as hardly put to it now, in diplomacy, as the Cardinal’s murderers had done, in war, when they met the scientific soldier, Strozzi. “The trade is now clean cut off from me,” wrote Randolph (October 27); “I have to traffic now with other merchants than before. They know the value of their wares, and in all places how the market goeth… Whatsoever policy is in all the chief and best practised heads of France; whatsoever craft, falsehood, or deceit is in all the subtle brains of Scotland,” said the unscrupulous agent, “is either fresh in this woman’s memory, or she can bring it out with a wet finger.” [230 - Bain, i. 565, 566.]

Mary, in fact, was in the hands of Lethington (a pensioner of Elizabeth) and of Lord James: “subtle brains” enough. She was the “merchandise,” and Lethington and Lord James wished to make Elizabeth acknowledge the Scottish Queen as her successor, the alternative being to seek her price as a wife for an European prince. An “union of hearts” with England might conceivably mean Mary’s acceptance of the Anglican faith. It is not a kind thing to say about Mary, but I suspect that, if assured of the English succession, she might have gone over to the Prayer Book. In the first months of her English captivity (July 1568) Mary again dallied with the idea of conversion, for the sake of freedom. She told the Spanish Ambassador that “she would sooner be murdered,” but if she could have struck her bargain with Elizabeth, I doubt that she would have chosen the Prayer Book rather than the dagger or the bowl. [231 - Froude, iii. 265-270 (1866).] Her conversion would have been bitterness as of wormwood to Knox. In his eyes Anglicanism was “a bastard religion,” “a mingle-mangle now commanded in your kirks.” “Peculiar services appointed for Saints’ days, diverse Collects as they falsely call them in remembrance of this or that Saint.. are in my conscience no small portion of papistical superstition.” [232 - Knox, vi. 83.] “Crossing in Baptism is a diabolical invention; kneeling at the Lord’s table, mummelling,” (uttering the responses, apparently), “or singing of the Litany.” All these practices are “diabolical inventions,” in Knox’s candid opinion, “with Mr. Parson’s pattering of his constrained prayers, and with the mass-munging of Mr. Vicar, and of his wicked companions.” (A blank in the MS.) “Your Ministers, before for the most part, were none of Christ’s ministers, but mass-mumming priests.” He appears to speak of the Anglican Church as it was under Edward VI. (To Mrs. Locke, Dieppe, April 6, 1559.) [233 - Knox, vi. 11-14.] As Elizabeth brought in “cross and candle,” her Church must have been odious to our Reformer. Calvin had regarded the “silly things” in our Prayer Book as “endurable,” not so Knox. Before he came back to Scotland, the Reformers were content with the English Prayer Book. By rejecting it, Knox and his allies disunited Scotland and England.

Knox’s friend Arran was threatening to stir up the Congregation for the purpose of securing him in the revenues of three abbeys, including St. Andrews, of which Lord James was Prior. The extremists raised the question, “whether the Queen, being an idolater, may be obeyed in all civil and political actions.” [234 - Bain, i. 569. Randolph to Cecil, November 11.]

Knox later made Chatelherault promise this obedience; what his views were in November 1561 we know not. Lord James was already distrusted by his old godly friends; it was thought he would receive what he had long desired, the Earldom of Moray (November 11, 1561), and the precise professors meditated a fresh revolution. “It must yet come to a new day,” they said. [235 - Ibid., i. 568-570.] Those about Arran were discontented, and nobody was more in his confidence than Knox, but at this time Arran was absent from Edinburgh; was at St. Andrews.

Meanwhile, at Court, “the ladies are merry, dancing, lusty, and fair,” wrote Randolph, who flirted with Mary Beaton (November 18); and long afterwards, in 1578, when she was Lady Boyne, spoke of her as “a very dear friend.” Knox complains that the girls danced when they “got the house alone”; not a public offence! He had his intelligencers in the palace.

There was, on November 16, a panic in the unguarded palace: [236 - There was a small guard, but no powerful guard existed till after Riccio’s murder.] “the poor damsels were left alone,” while men hid in fear of nobody knew what, except a rumour that Arran was coming, with his congregational friends, “to take away the Queen.” The story was perhaps a fable, but Arran had been uttering threats. Mary, however, expected to be secured by an alliance with Elizabeth. “The accord between the two Queens will quite overthrow them” (the Bishops), “and they say plainly that she cannot return a true Christian woman,” writes Randolph. [237 - Bain, i. 575. Randolph to Cecil, December 7.]

Lethington and Randolph both suspected that if Mary abandoned idolatry, it would be after conference with Elizabeth, and rather as being converted by that fair theologian than as compelled by her subjects. Unhappily Elizabeth never would meet Mary, who, for all that we know, might at this hour have adopted the Anglican via media, despite her protests to Knox and to the Pope of her fidelity to Rome. Like Henri IV., she may at this time have been capable of preferring a crown – that of England – to a dogma. Her Mass, Randolph wrote, “is rather for despite than devotion, for those that use it care not a straw for it, and jest sometimes against it.” [238 - Ibid., i. 571.]

Randolph, at this juncture, reminded Mary that advisers of the Catholic party had prevented James V. from meeting Henry VIII. She answered, “Something is reserved for us that was not then,” possibly hinting at her conversion. Lord James shared the hopes of Lethington and Randolph. “The Papists storm, thinking the meeting of the queens will overthrow Mass and all.”

The Ministers of Mary, les politiques, indulged in dreams equally distasteful to the Catholics and to the more precise of the godly; dreams that came through the Ivory Gate; with pictures of the island united, and free from the despotism of Giant Pope and Giant Presbyter. [239 - It is plain from Randolph (Bain, i. 575) that the precise feared that Mary, if secured by the English alliance, would be severe with “true professors of Christ.”] A schism between the brethren and their old leaders and advisers, Lord James and Lethington, was the result. At the General Assembly of December 1561, the split was manifest. The parties exchanged recriminations, and there was even question of the legality of such conventions as the General Assembly. Lethington asked whether the Queen “allowed” the gathering. Knox (apparently) replied, “Take from us the freedom of Assemblies, and take from us the Evangel.” He defended them as necessary for order among the preachers; but the objection, of course, was to their political interferences. The question was to be settled for Cromwell in his usual way, with a handful of hussars. It was now determined that the Queen might send Commissioners to the Assembly to represent her interests.

The plea of the godly that Mary should ratify the Book of Discipline was countered by the scoffs of Lethington. He and his brothers ever tormented Knox by persiflage. Still the preachers must be supported, and to that end, by a singular compromise, the Crown assumed dominion over the property of the old Church, a proceeding which Mary, if a good Catholic, could not have sanctioned. The higher clergy retained two-thirds of their benefices, and the other third was to be divided between the preachers and the Queen. Vested rights, those of the prelates, and the interests of the nobles to whom, in the troubles, they had feued parts of their property, were thus secured; while the preachers were put off with a humble portion. Among the abbeys, that of St. Andrews, held by the good Lord James, was one of the richest. He appears to have retained all the wealth, for, as Bishop Keith says, “the grand gulf that swallowed up the whole extent of the thirds were pensions given gratis by the Queen to those about the Court.. of which last the Earl of Moray was always sure to obtain the thirds of his priories of St. Andrews and Pittenweem.” In all, the whole reformed clergy received annually (but not in 1565-66) £24,231, 17s. 7d. Scots, while Knox and four superintendents got a few chalders of wheat and “bear.” In 1568, when Mary had fallen, a gift of £333, 6s. 8d. was made to Knox from the fund, about a seventh of the money revenue of the Abbey of St. Andrews. [240 - Keith, iii. 384, 385.] Nobody can accuse Knox of enriching himself by the Revolution. “In the stool of Edinburgh,” he declared that two parts were being given to the devil, “and the third must be divided between God and the devil,” between the preachers and the Queen, and the Earl of Moray, among others. The eminently godly Laird of Pitarro had the office of paying the preachers, in which he was so niggardly that the proverb ran, “The good Laird of Pitarro was an earnest professor of Christ, but the great devil receive the Comptroller.”

It was argued that “many Lords have not so much to spend” as the preachers; and this was not denied (if the preachers were paid), but it was said the Lords had other industries whereby they might eke out their revenues. Many preachers, then or later, were driven also to other industries, such as keeping public-houses. [241 - Knox, ii. 300-313. Pollen, “Mary’s Letter to the Duc de Guise,” xli. – xlvii.] Knox, at this period, gracefully writes of Mary, “we call her not a hoore.” When she scattered his party after Riccio’s murder, he went the full length of the expression, in his “History.”

“Simplicity,” says Thucydides, “is no small part of a noble nature,” and Knox was now to show simplicity in conduct, and in his narrative of a very curious adventure.

The Hamiltons had taken little but loss by joining the Congregation. Arran could not recover his claims, on whatever they were founded, over the wealth of St. Andrews and Dunfermline. Chatelherault feared that Mary would deprive him of his place of refuge, the castle of Dumbarton, to which he confessed that his right was “none,” beyond a verbal promise of a nineteen years “farm” (when given we know not), from Mary of Guise. [242 - Bain, i. 568, 569.] Randolph began to believe that Arran really had contemplated a raid on Mary at Holyrood, where she had no guards. [243 - Ibid., i. 585. Randolph to Cecil, January 2, 1562.] “Why,” asked Arran, “was it not as easy to take her out of the Abbey, as once it had been intended to do with her mother?”

Here were elements of trouble, and Knox adds that, according to the servants of Chatelherault, Huntly and the Hamiltons devised to slay Lord James, who in January received the Earldom of Moray, but bore the title of Earl of Mar, which earldom he held for a brief space. [244 - There is an air of secrecy in these transactions. In the Register of the Privy Seal, vol. xxxi. fol. 45 (MS.), is a “Precept for a Charter under the Great Seal,” a charter to Lord James for the Earldom of Moray. The date is January 31, 1560-61. On February 7, 1560-61, Lord James receives the Earldom of Mar, having to pay a pair of gilded spurs on the feast of St. John (Register of Privy Seal, vol. xxx. fol. 2). Lord James now bore the title of Earl of Mar, not, as yet – not till Huntly was put at – of Moray.] Huntly had claims on Moray, and hence hated Lord James. Arran was openly sending messengers to France; “his councils are too patent.” Randolph at the same time found Knox and the preachers “as wilfull as learned, which heartily I lament” (January 30). The rumour that Mary had been persuaded by the Cardinal to turn Anglican “makes them run almost wild” (February 12). [245 - Dr. Hay Fleming quotes Randolph thus: “The Papists mistrust greatly the meeting; the Protestants as greatly desire it. The preachers are more vehement than discreet or learned.” (Mary Queen of Scots, p. 292, note 35, citing For. Cal. Eliz., iv. 523.) The Calendar is at fault and gives the impression that the ministers vehemently preached in favour of the meeting of the Queen. This was not so, Randolph goes on, “which I heartily lament.” He uses the whole phrase, more than is here given, not only on January 30, but on February 12. Now Randolph desired the meeting, so the preachers must have “thundered” against it! They feared that Mary would become a member of the Church of England, “of which they both say and preach that it is little better than when it was at the worst” (Bain, i. 603).] If the Queen were an Anglican the new Kirk would be in an ill way. Arran still sent retainers to France, and was reported to speak ill of Mary (February 21), but the Duke tried to win Randolph to a marriage between Arran and the Queen. The intended bridegroom lay abed for a week, “tormented by imaginations,” but was contented, not to be reconciled with Bothwell, but to pass his misdeeds in “oblivion,” [246 - Keith, ii. 139.] as he declared to the Privy Council (February 20).

In these threatening circumstances Bothwell made Knox’s friend, Barron, a rich burgess who “financed” the Earl, introduce him to our Reformer. The Earl explained that his feud with Arran was very expensive; he had for his safety to keep “a number of wicked and unprofitable men about him” – his “Lambs,” the Ormistouns, [247 - The Teviotdale Ormistouns of that ilk.] young Hay of Tala, probably, and the rest. He therefore repented, and wished to be reconciled to Arran. Knox, pleased at being a reconciler where nobler men had failed, and moved, after long refusal, by the entreaties of the godly, as he tells Mrs. Locke, advised Bothwell first to be reconciled to God. So Bothwell presently was, going to sermon for that very purpose. Knox promised to approach Arran, and Bothwell, with his usual impudence, chose that moment to seize an old pupil of Knox’s, the young Laird of Ormiston (Cockburn). The young laird, to be sure, had fired a pistol at his enemy. However, Bothwell repented of this lapse, and at the Hamilton’s great house of Kirk-of-Field, Knox made him and Arran friends. Next day they went to sermon together; on the following day they visited Chatelherault at Kinneil, some twelve miles from Edinburgh. But on the ensuing day (March 26) came the wild end of the reconciliation.

Knox had delivered his daily sermon, and was engaged with his vast correspondence, when Arran was announced, with an advocate and the town clerk. Arran began a conference with tears, said that he was betrayed, and told his tale. Bothwell had informed him that he would seize the Queen, put her in Dumbarton, kill her misguiders, the “Earl of Moray” (Mar, Lord James), Lethington, and others, “and so shall he and I rule all.”

But Arran believed Bothwell really intended to accuse him of treason, or knowledge of treason, so he meant to write to Mary and Mar. Knox asked whether he had assented to the plot, and advised him to be silent. Probably he saw that Arran was distraught, and did not credit his story. But Arran said that Bothwell (as he had once done before, in 1559) would challenge him to a judicial combat – such challenges were still common, but never led to a fight. He then walked off with his legal advisers, and wrote to Mary at Falkland. [248 - In Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials is Arran’s report of Bothwell’s very words, vol. i., part 2, pp. 462-465.] If Arran went mad, he went mad “with advice of counsel.” There had come the chance of “a new day,” which the extremists desired, but its dawn was inauspicious.

Arran rode to his father’s house of Kinneil, where, either because he was insane, or because there really was a Bothwell-Hamilton plot, he was locked up in a room high above the ground. He let himself down from the window, reached Halyards (a place of Kirkcaldy of Grange), and was thence taken by Mar (whom Knox appears to have warned) to the Queen at Falkland. Bothwell and Gawain Hamilton were also put in ward there. Randolph gives (March 31) a similar account, but believed that there really was a plot, which Arran denied even before he arrived at Falkland. Bothwell came to purge himself, but “was found guilty on his own confession on some points.” [249 - Bain, i. 613, 614.]

The Queen now went to St. Andrews, where the suspects were placed in the Castle. Arran wavered, accusing Mar’s mother of witchcraft. Mary was “not a little offended with Bothwell to whom she has been so good.” Randolph (April 7) continued to think that Arran should be decapitated. He and Bothwell were kept in ward, and his father, the Duke, was advised to give up Dumbarton to the Crown, which he did. [250 - Bain, i. 618, 619.] This was about April 23. Knox makes a grievance of the surrender; the Castle, he says, was by treaty to be in the Duke’s hands till the Queen had lawful issue. [251 - Knox, ii. 330.] Chatelherault himself, as we said, told Randolph that he had no right in the place, beyond a verbal and undated promise of the late Regent.

Knox now again illustrates his own historical methods. Mary, riding between Falkland and Lochleven, fell, was hurt, and when Randolph wrote from Edinburgh on May 11, was not expected there for two or three days. But Knox reports that, on her return from Fife to Edinburgh, she danced excessively till after midnight, because she had received letters “that persecution was begun again in France,” by the Guises. [252 - Ibid., ii. 330, 331.] Now as, according to Knox elsewhere, “Satan stirreth his terrible tail,” so did one of Mary’s uncles, the Duc de Guise, “stir his tail” against one of the towns appointed to pay Mary’s jointure, namely Vassy, in Champagne. Here, on March 1, 1562, a massacre of Huguenots, by the Guise’s retainers, began the war of religion afresh. [253 - Cf. Baird, The Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 21 et seq.]

Now, in the first place, this could not be joyful news to set Mary dancing; as it was apt to prevent what she had most at heart, her personal interview with Elizabeth. She understood this perfectly well, and, in conversation with Randolph, after her return to Edinburgh, lamented the deeds of her uncles, as calculated “to bring them in hate and disdain of many princes,” and also to chill Elizabeth’s amity for herself – on which her whole policy now depended (May 29). [254 - Bain, i. 627. Randolph to Cecil, May 29.] She wept when Randolph said that, in the state of France, Elizabeth was not likely to move far from London for their interview. In this mood how could Mary give a dance to celebrate an event which threatened ruin to her hopes?

Moreover, if Knox, when he speaks of “persecution begun again,” refers to the slaughter of Huguenots by Guise’s retinue, at Vassy, that untoward event occurred on March 1, and Mary cannot have been celebrating it by a ball at Holyrood as late as May 14, at earliest. [255 - Cf. Froude, vi. 547-565.] Knox, however, preached against her dancing, if she danced “for pleasure at the displeasure of God’s people”; so he states the case. Her reward, in that case, would he “drink in hell.” In his “History” he declares that Mary did dance for the evil reason attributed to her, a reason which must have been mere matter of inference on his part, and that inference wrong, judging by dates, if the reference is to the affair of Vassy. In April both French parties were committing brutalities, but these were all contrary to Mary’s policy and hopes.

If Knox heard a rumour against any one, his business, according to the “Book of Discipline,” was not to go and preach against that person, even by way of insinuation. [256 - “Book of Discipline,” Knox, ii. 228.] Mary’s offence, if any existed, was not “public,” and was based on mere suspicion, or on tattle. Dr. M‘Crie, indeed, says that on hearing of the affair of Vassy, the Queen “immediately after gave a splendid ball to her foreign servants.” Ten weeks after the Vassy affair is not “immediately”; and Knox mentions neither foreign servants nor Vassy. [257 - M‘Crie, 187.]

The Queen sent for Knox, and made “a long harangue,” of which he does not report one word. He gives his own oration. Mary then said that she could not expect him to like her uncles, as they differed in religion. But if he heard anything of herself that he disapproved of, “come to myself and tell me, and I shall hear you.” He answered that he was not bound to come “to every man in particular,” but she could come to his sermons! If she would name a day and hour, he would give her a doctrinal lecture. At this very moment he “was absent from his book”; his studies were interrupted.

“You will not always be at your book,” she said, and turned her back. To some papists in the antechamber he remarked, “Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman affray me? I have looked in the faces of many angry men, and yet have not been afraid above measure.”

He was later to flee before that pleasing face.

Mary can hardly be said to have had the worse, as far as manners and logic went, of this encounter, at which Morton, Mar, and Lethington were present, and seem to have been silent. [258 - Knox, ii. 330-335.]