Mary, whose only chance lay in outstaying Elizabeth in the policy of celibacy, had been driven, or led, by her rival Queen into a marriage which would have been the best possible, had Darnley been a man of character and a Protestant. He was the typical “young fool,” indolent, incapable, fierce, cowardly, and profligate. His religion was dubious. After his arrival (on February 26, 1565) he went with Moray to hear Knox preach, but he had been bred by a Catholic mother, and, on occasion, posed as an ardent Catholic. [{246}] It is unfortunate that Randolph is silent about Knox during all the period of the broils which preceded and followed Mary’s marriage.
On August 19, 1565, Darnley, now Mary’s husband, went to hear Knox preach in St. Giles’s, on the text, “O Lord our God, other lords than Thou have ruled over us.” “God,” he said, “sets in that room (for the offences and ingratitude of the people) boys and women.” Ahab also appeared, as usual. Ahab “had not taken order with that harlot, Jezebel.” So Book V. says, and “harlot” would be a hit at Mary’s alleged misconduct with Riccio. A hint in a letter of Randolph’s of August 24, may point to nascent scandal about the pair. But the printed sermon, from Knox’s written copy, reads, not “harlot” but “idolatrous wife.” At all events, Darnley was so moved by this sermon that he would not dine. [{247a}] Knox was called “from his bed” to the Council chamber, where were Atholl, Ruthven, Lethington, the Justice Clerk, and the Queen’s Advocate. He was attended by a great crowd of notable citizens, but Lethington forbade him to preach for a fortnight or three weeks. He said that, “If the Church would command him to preach or abstain he would obey, so far as the Word of God would permit him.”
It seems that he would only obey even the Church as far as he chose.
The Town Council protested against the deprivation, and we do not know how long Knox desisted from preaching. Laing thinks that, till Mary fell, he preached only “at occasional intervals.” [{247b}] But we shall see that he did presently go on preaching, with Lethington for a listener. He published his sermon, without name of place or printer. The preacher informs his audience that “in the Hebrew there is no conjunction copulative” in a certain sentence; probably he knew more Hebrew than most of our pastors.
The sermon is very long, and, wanting the voice and gesture of the preacher, is no great proof of eloquence; in fact, is tedious. Probably Darnley was mainly vexed by the length, though he may have had intelligence enough to see that he and Mary were subjects of allusions. Knox wrote the piece from memory, on the last of August, in “the terrible roaring of guns, and the noise of armour.” The banded Lords, Moray and the rest, had entered Edinburgh, looking for supporters, and finding none. Erskine, commanding the Castle, fired six or seven shots as a protest, and the noise of these disturbed the prophet at his task. As a marginal note says, “The Castle of Edinburgh was shooting against the exiled for Christ Jesus’ sake” [{248a}]—namely, at Moray and his company. Knox prayed for them in public, and was accused of so doing, but Lethington testified that he had heard “the sermons,” and found in them no ground of offence. [{248b}]
Moray, Ochiltree, Pitarro, and many others being now exiles in England, whose Queen had subsidised and repudiated them and their revolution, things went hard with the preachers. For a whole year at least (December 1565-66) their stipends were not paid, the treasury being exhausted by military and other expenses, and Pitarro being absent. At the end of December, Knox and his colleague, Craig, were ordered by the General Assembly to draw up and print a service for a general Fast, to endure from the last Sunday in February to the first in March, 1566. One cause alleged is that the Queen’s conversion had been hoped for, but now she said that she would “maintain and defend” [{248c}] her own faith. She had said no less to Knox at their first interview, but now she had really written, when invited to abolish her Mass, that her subjects may worship as they will, but that she will not desert her religion. [{249a}] It was also alleged that the godly were to be destroyed all over Europe, in accordance with decrees of the Council of Trent. Moreover, vice, manslaughter, and oppression of the poor continued, prices of commodities rose, and work was scamped. The date of the Fast was fixed, not to coincide with Lent, but because it preceded an intended meeting of Parliament, [{249b}] a Parliament interrupted by the murder of Riccio, and the capture of the Queen. No games were to be played during the two Sundays of the Fast, which looks as if they were still permitted on other Sundays. The appointed lessons were from Judges, Esther, Chronicles, Isaiah, and Esdras; the New Testament, apparently, supplied nothing appropriate. It seldom did. The lay attendants of the Assembly of Christmas Day which decreed the Fast, were Morton, Mar, Lindsay, Lethington, with some lairds.
The Protestants must have been alarmed, in February 1566, by a report, to which Randolph gave circulation, that Mary had joined a Catholic League, with the Pope, the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Duke of Savoy, and others. Lethington may have believed this; at all events he saw no hope of pardon for Moray and his abettors—“no certain way, unless we chop at the very root, you know where it lieth” (February 9). [{249c}] Probably he means the murder of Riccio, not of the Queen. Bedford said that Mary had not yet signed the League. [{249d}] We are aware of no proof that there was any League to sign, and though Mary was begging money both from Spain and the Pope, she probably did not expect to procure more than tolerance for her own religion. [{250a}] The rumours, however, must have had their effect in causing apprehension. Moreover, Darnley, from personal jealousy; Morton, from fear of losing the Seals; the Douglases, kinsmen of Morton and Darnley; and the friends of the exiled nobles, seeing that they were likely to be forfeited, conspired with Moray in England to be Darnley’s men, to slay Riccio, and to make the Queen subordinate to Darnley, and “to fortify and maintain” the Protestant faith. Mary, indeed, had meant to reintroduce the Spiritual Estate into Parliament, as a means of assisting her Church; so she writes to Archbishop Beaton in Paris. [{250b}]
Twelve wooden altars, to be erected in St. Giles’s, are said by Knox’s continuator to have been found in Holyrood. [{250c}]
Mary’s schemes, whatever they extended to, were broken by the murder of Riccio in the evening of March 9. He was seized in her presence, and dirked by fifty daggers outside of her room. Ruthven, who in June 1564 had come into Mary’s good graces, and Morton were, with Darnley, the leaders of the Douglas feud, and of the brethren.