Cecil, prior to the compact of July 24, had wished to meet Knox at Stamford. On July 30 Knox received his instructions as negotiator with England. [{152b}] His employers say that they hear that Huntly and Chatelherault have promised to join the Reformers if the Regent breaks a jot of the treaty of July 24, the terms of which Knox can declare. They ask money to enable them to take Stirling Castle, and “strength by sea” for the capture of Broughty Castle, on Tay. Yet they later complained of the Regent when she fortified Leith. They actually did take Broughty Castle, and then had the hardihood to aver that they only set about this when they heard in mid-September of the fortification of Leith by the Regent. They aimed at it six days after their treaty of July 24. They asked for soldiers to lie in garrison, for men, ships, and money for their Lords.
Bearing these instructions Knox sailed from Fife to Holy Island, near Berwick, and there met Croft, the Governor of that town. Croft kept him, not with sufficient secrecy, in Berwick, where he was well known, while Whitelaw was coming from Cecil with his answers to the petitions of the brethren. Meanwhile Croft held converse with Knox, who, as he reports, says that, as to the change of “Authority” (that is of sovereignty, temporary at least), the choice of the brethren would be subject to Elizabeth’s wishes. Yet the brethren contemplated no change of Authority! Arran ought to be kept secretly in England “till wise men considered what was in him; if misliked he put Lord James second.” As to what Knox told Croft about the terms of treaty of July 24, it is best to state the case in Croft’s own words. “He (Knox) excusys the Protestantes, for that the French as commyng apon them at Edynbrogh when theyr popoll were departed to make new provysyon of vytaylles, forcyd them to make composycyon wyth the quene. Whereyn (sayeth he) the frenchmen ar apoynted to departe out of Scotland by the xth of thys monthe, and they truste verely by thys caus to be stronger, for that the Duke, apon breche of promys on the quene’s part, wyll take playne parte withe the Protestantes.” [{153}]
This is quite explicit. Knox, as envoy of the Lords, declares that in the treaty it is “appointed” that the French force shall leave Scotland on August 10. (The printed calendars are not accurate.) No such matter occurred in the treaty “wyth the quene.” Knox added, next day, that he himself “was unfit to treat of so great matters,” and Croft appears to have agreed with him, for, by the Reformer’s lack of caution, his doings in Holy Island were “well known and published.” Consequently, when Whitelaw returned to Knox with Cecil’s reply to the requests of the brethren, the performances of Knox and Whitelaw were no secrets, in outline at least, to the Regent’s party. For this reason, Lord Seton, mistaking Whitelaw for Knox (who had set out on August 3 to join the brethren at Stirling), pursued and broke a chair on the harmless Brother Whitelaw. Such was the Regent’s treacherous breach of treaty!
During this episode in his curious adventures as a diplomatist, Knox recommended Balnaves, author of a treatise on “Justification by Faith,” as a better agent in these courses, and with Balnaves the new envoy of Elizabeth, Sadleir, a veteran diplomatist (wheedled in 1543 by Mary of Guise), transacted business henceforth. Sadleir was ordered to Berwick on August 6. Elizabeth infringed the treaty of Cateau Cambresis, then only four months old, by giving Sadleir £3000 in gold, or some such sum, for the brethren. “They were tempting the Duke by all means possible,” [{154a}] but he will only promise neutrality if it comes to the push, and they, Argyll and Lord James say (Glasgow, August 13), are not yet ready “to discharge this authority,” that is, to depose the Regent. Chatelherault’s promise was less vigorous than it had been reported!
Knox, who now acted as secretary for the Congregation, was not Sir Henry Wotton’s ideal ambassador, “an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country.” When he stooped to statements which seem scarcely candid, to put it mildly, he did violence to his nature. He forced himself to proclaim the loyalty of his party from the pulpit, when he could not do so without some economy of truth. [{154b}] He inserted things in his “History,” and spoke things to Croft, which he should have known to be false. But he carried his point. He did advance the “union of hearts” with England, if in a blundering fashion, and we owe him eternal gratitude for his interest in the match, though “we like not the manner of the wooing.” The reluctant hand of Elizabeth was now inextricably caught in the gear of that great machine which broke the ancient league of France and Scotland, and saved Scotland from some of the sorrows of France.
The papers of Sadleir, Elizabeth’s secret agent with the Scots, show the godly pursuing their old plan of campaign. To make treaty with the Regent; to predict from the pulpit that she would break it; to make false statements about the terms of the treaty; to accuse her of their infringement; to profess loyalty; to aim at setting up a new sovereign power; to tell the populace that Mary of Guise’s scanty French reinforcements—some 1500 men—came by virtue of a broken treaty; to tell Sadleir that they were very glad that the French had come, as they would excite popular hatred; to make out that the fortification of Leith was breach of treaty;—such, in brief, were the methods of the Reformers. [{155}]
They now took a new method of proving the Regent’s breach of treaty, that she had “set up the Mass in Holyrood, which they had before suppressed.” They were allowed to have their sermons in St. Giles’s, but she was not to have her rites in her own abbey. Balnaves still harped on the non-dismissal of the French as a breach of treaty!
Arran, returning from Switzerland, had an interview with Elizabeth in England, in mid-September, was smuggled across the Border with the astute and unscrupulous Thomas Randolph in his train. With Arran among them, Chatelherault might waver as he would. Meanwhile Knox and Willock preached up and down the country, doubtless repeating to the people their old charges against the Regent. Lethington, the secretary of that lady, still betrayed her, telling Sadleir “that he attended upon the Regent no longer than he might have a good occasion to revolt unto the Protestants” (September 16).
Balnaves got some two to three thousand pounds in gold (the sum is variously stated) from Sadleir. “He saith, whatever pretence they make, the principal mark they shoot at is to make an alteration of the State and authority.” This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the leaders said, had “tempted him” sufficiently. They had come up to his price. Arran, the hoped-for Hamilton king, the hoped-for husband of the Queen of England, had arrived, and with Arran the Duke joined the Reformers. About September 20 they forbade the Regent to fortify Leith.
The brethren say that they have given no “provocation.” Six weeks earlier they had requested England to help them to seize and hold Broughty Castle, though the Regent may not have known that detail.