[586] Sir John Masone, Ambassador for England at the French Court, on the 14th June 1550, says, "Touching the Scots at St. Andrews, he (the Constable of France) told me that the Lord Grange and his brother are flown he wist not whither, and two others were already set at liberty; and that the rest, at the King (Edward VI.) my master's contentation, should out of hand be put at large."—(Tytler's Edward VI., &c., vol. i. p. 295.)
[587] In Vautr. edit. "they purposed."
[588] The names of these brethren are very much overlooked by the different Peerage writers of Scotland, in their pedigrees of the Rothes family. The first marriage of George Earl of Rothes with Margaret Crichton, daughter of William Lord Crichton, was declared before 1524 to be uncanonical. But by this lady, "his affidate spouse," he had four sons: the eldest was George, who died unmarried; the others were Norman, William, and Robert. The reader may be referred to the Appendix of Nisbet's Heraldry, vol. ii. p. 141, to explain the grounds upon which the two latter, as heirs-male, were passed over in the succession, at their father's death, in 1558, when Andrew Lesley, the eldest son by subsequent marriage, and who had married a niece of the Governor the Earl of Arran, became Earl of Rothes. Of these two brethren, William is styled in Macfarlane's Genealogical Collections, "Laird of Cairnie, and, (it is added,) as some say, he died without succession." Bishop Lesley, in noticing the death of Norman Lesley in France, in 1554, says, "The King of France, for recompence of his service, received his eldest brodir William in favour, and maid him gentill man of his chalmer."—(History, p. 249.) Knox's words in the text imply that he was alive in 1566. The other brother Robert, is perhaps the same who was admitted an Advocate in the Court of Session, in May 1537. He settled in Morayshire, in the parish of Spynie, and became founder of the Fendrassie family. He married Janet Elphingstone, a daughter of Robert Lord Elphingstone, and left three sons and two daughters. An inscription, in Latin verse, in the Cathedral Church of Elgin, while it commemorates their virtues and attachment, records that he and his wife were interred in the same grave.—(Monteith's Theatre of Mortality, p. 222, Edinb., 1713, 8vo.)
[589] Le Conquet, a small town of Britanny, with a good harbour, opposite the island of Ushant, sixteen miles west of Brest.
[590] He was probably the same person with Alexander Clark of Balbirnie, who became Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1579 to 1583 inclusive.
[591] In this paragraph Knox sums up briefly his own history between February 1548-9, when he was delivered from the French galley, and his first return to Scotland, in the end of harvest 1555.
[592] Edward died on the 6th July 1553.
[593] The word "English" is omitted in Vautr. edit.
[594] Knox has abstained from entering upon any statement of the disputes which took place in the English congregation at Francfort, in 1554, in consequence of the introduction, by Dr. Coxe and others, of the Book of Common Prayer, and the use of various ceremonies. A short paper by Knox himself, connected with the charge brought against him before the Magistrates of Francfort, has been preserved by Calderwood, (Hist., vol. i. p. 120,) and will naturally fall to be included in Vol. III. of the present work. But a detailed account of the transactions at that time was drawn up and published anonymously, three years after Knox's death, by one of the Nonconformists. It is entitled, "A Brieff Discours off the Troubles begunne at Franckford in Germany, Anno Domini 1554. Abowte the booke off Common Prayer and Ceremonies, and continued by the Englishe men theyre, to thame off Q. Maries Reigne," and was originally published (at Geneva) in 1575, 4to. There is an accurate reprint of it at London, by John Petheram, 1846, 8vo, in which it is suggested, by the Rev. Thomas MʻCrie, with great probability, the author may have been Dr. William Whittingham.
[595] There were two editions of Knox's Admonition printed in 1554, within a few months of each other, under a fictitious imprint, and both of them abroad, as will be fully described in Vol. III.