The fall of Mary, the triumph of Protestantism, appear to have, in some degree, rather diminished the prominence of Knox. He would never make Mary weep again. He had lost the protagonist against whom, for a while, he had stood almost alone, and soon we find him complaining of neglect. He appeared at the General Assembly of June 25, 1567—a scanty gathering. George Buchanan, a layman, was Moderator: the Assembly was adjourned to July 21, and the brethren met in arms; wherefore Argyll, who had signed the band for Darnley’s murder, declined to come. [{256a}] The few nobles, the barons, and others present, vowed to punish the murder of Darnley and to defend the child prince; and it was decided that henceforth all Scottish princes should swear to “set forward the true religion of Jesus Christ, as at present professed and established in this realm”—as they are bound to do—“by Deuteronomy and the second chapter of the Book of Kings,” which, in fact, do not speak of establishing Calvinism.
Among those who sign are Morton, who had guilty foreknowledge of the murder; while his kinsman, Archibald Douglas, was present at the doing; Sir James Balfour, who was equally involved; Lethington, who signed the murder covenant; and Douglas of Whittingham, and Ker of Faldonside, two of Riccio’s assassins. Most of the nobles stood aloof.
Presently Throckmorton arrived, sent by Elizabeth with the pretence, at least, of desiring to save Mary’s life, which, but for his exertions, he thought would have been taken. He “feared Knox’s austerity as much as any man’s” (July 14). [{256b}]
On July 17 Knox arrived from the west, where he had been trying to unite the Protestants. [{256c}] Throckmorton found Craig and Knox “very austere,” well provided with arguments from the Bible, history, the laws of Scotland, and the Coronation Oath. [{257a}] Knox in his sermons “threatened the great plague of God to this whole nation and country if the Queen be spared from her condign punishment.” [{257b}]
Murderers were in the habit of being lightly let off, in Scotland, and, as to Mary, she could easily have been burned for husband-murder, but not so easily convicted thereof with any show of justice. The only direct evidence of her complicity lay in the Casket Letters, and several of her lordly accusers were (if she were guilty) her accomplices. Her prayer to be heard in self-defence at the ensuing Parliament of December was refused, for excellent reasons; and her opponents had the same good reasons for not bringing her to trial. Knox was perfectly justified if he desired her to be tried, but several lay members of the General Assembly could not have faced that ordeal, and Randolph later accused Lethington, in a letter to him, of advising her assassination. [{257c}]
On July 29 Knox preached at the Coronation of James VI. at Stirling, protesting against the rite of anointing. True, it was Jewish, but it had passed through the impure hands of Rome, as, by the way, had Baptism. Knox also preached at the opening of Parliament, on December 15. We know little of him at this time. He had sent his sons to Cambridge, into danger of acquiring Anglican opinions, which they did; but now he seems to have taken a less truculent view of Anglicanism than in 1559-60. He had been drawing a prophetic historical parallel between Chatelherault (more or less of the Queen’s party) and Judas Iscariot, and was not loved by the Hamiltons. The Duke was returning from France, “to restore Satan to his kingdom,” with the assistance of the Guises. Knox mentions an attempt to assassinate Moray, now Regent, which is obscure. “I live as a man already dead from all civil things.” Thus he wrote to Wood, Moray’s agent, then in England on the affair of the Casket Letters (September 10, 1568).
He had already (February 14) declined to gratify Wood by publishing his “History.” He would not permit it to appear during his life, as “it will rather hurt me than profit them” (his readers). He was, very naturally, grieved that the conduct of men was not conformable to “the truth of God, now of some years manifest.” He was not concerned to revenge his own injuries “by word or writ,” and he foresaw schism in England over questions of dress and rites. [{258a}]
He was neglected. “Have not thine oldest and stoutest acquaintance” (Moray, or Kirkcaldy of Grange?) “buried thee in present oblivion, and art thou not in that estate, by age, [{258b}] that nature itself calleth thee from the pleasure of things temporal?” (August 19, 1569).
“In trouble impatient, tending to desperation,” Knox had said of himself. He was still unhappy. “Foolish Scotland” had “disobeyed God by sparing the Queen’s life,” and now the proposed Norfolk marriage of Mary and her intended restoration were needlessly dreaded. A month later, Lethington, thrown back on Mary by his own peril for his share in Darnley’s murder, writes to the Queen that some ministers are reconcilable, “but Nox I think be inflexible.” [{259a}]
A year before Knox wrote his melancholy letter, just cited, he had some curious dealings with the English Puritans. In 1566 many of them had been ejected from their livings, and, like the Scottish Catholics, they “assembled in woods and private houses to worship God.” [{259b}] The edifying controversies between these precisians and Grindal, the Bishop of London, are recorded by Strype. The bishop was no zealot for surplices and the other momentous trifles which agitate the human conscience, but Elizabeth insisted on them; and “Her Majesty’s Government must be carried on.” The precisians had deserted the English Liturgy for the Genevan Book of Common Order; both sides were appealing to Beza, in Geneva, and were wrangling about the interpretation of that Pontiff’s words. [{259c}]