lodged at Kinross; for the conversation which had been carried on in the Castle the night before, was resumed next morning on the Hawking hill to the west of the town,-where her attendants with horse and hawk and hound were waiting the signal to start.

As time wore on the irritation increased. Moray, the Master of Maxwell, all those of the lay lords, except Glencairn, who had been the pillars of the infant Church, one by one deserted Knox, and went over to the faction that Maitland led. The insolent personalities in which the preachers indulged were more than the nobles could stomach. The "supplications" of the General Assemblies had become thinly veiled incitements to sedition. The Queen must put away "that idol and bastard service of God, the Messe,"

as well from herself as from all others within this realm;" and she was plainly told that, although nothing was more odious to them than tumults and domestic discord, yet would they attempt the uttermost before they beheld with their own eyes the house of God demolished, "quhilk with travail and danger God hath within this realm erected by us." If redress was not speedily afforded, they were assured that God's hand would not long spare in His anger "to strike the head and the tail; the inobedient

prince and the sinful people." Lethington, among others, having taken exception to the form as well as the substance of the address ("For who ever saw it written to a prince that God would strike the head and the tail?"), Knox promptly rejoined, "that the prophet Esaias used such manner of speaking; and there was no doubt he was weill acquainted in the Court; for it was supposed he was of the king's stock." His answer to the suggestion that a complaint might be preferred against any person who was guilty of a contravention of the law, was happier and more pointed. The sheep, he said, might as well complain to the wolf. "If the sheep shall complain to the wolf that the wolves and whelps has devoured their lambs, the complainer may stand in danger; but the offender, we feare, shall have liberty to hunt after the prey." Lethington, it is added, considered such comparisons-the Queen having shown no desire or inclination to establish Papistry--" veray unsaverie"; and the Assembly appear to have agreed with him; for the supplication, Knox adds, " was given to be reformed as Lethington's wisdom thought best. And in very deed he framed it so, that when it was delivered, and she had read somewhat of it, she said, 'Here are many fair words; I cannot tell what the hearts are.' And so, for our paint

ed oratory, we were termed the next name to flatterers and dissemblers."1

The Queen's growing popularity with her subjects was wormwood to Knox. While the preachers were everywhere denounced as "railers," Mary's conciliatory policy was as widely approved. When she opened the Parliament of 1563, she received, as she rode from Holyrood to the Tolbooth, an enthusiastic welcome from the citizens of the capital. "Such stinking pride of women as was seen at that Parliament, was never seen before in Scotland. Three sundry days the Queen rode to the Tolbooth. The first day she made a painted oration; and there micht have been heard among her flatterers, 'Vox Dianæ The voice of a goddess and not of a woman! God save that sweet face! Was there ever orator spak so properlie and so sweetly?'" To flatter a woman, and that woman a queen and a Catholic, was a dire offence in Knox's eyes; and he took a characteristic revenge by abusing the fashion of her petticoats. "All things misliking the preachers," we are told, "they spak boldly against the tarjetting of their tails". some mysterious device of the feminine toilet— which, they expected, would " provoke God's vengeance not only against those foolish women,

1 Knox, ii. 338-45; Calderwood, ii. 187.

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but against the whole realm which allowed such odious abusing of things that might have been better bestowed." 1 Mary, as we know, was being wooed by France, Austria, and Spain; and before the Parliament adjourned, Knox delivered a rousing discourse against her marriage with an infidel. Whensoever," he declared, "the nobility of Scotland, professing the Lord Jesus, consents that an infidel (and all Papists are infidels) shall be head to your sovereign, ye do as far as in ye lieth to banish Christ Jesus from this realm." Mary was very indignant, and Protestant and Catholic alike were offended, -"this manner of speaking being judged intolerable." Knox was again summoned to the palace, where the Queen, moved to tears, reproached him for his harshness. But the sturdy divine, who had looked many angry men in the face, as he said, "without being afraid beyond measure," was nothing abashed. "When it shall please God," he told the Queen, “to deliver you from that bondage of darkness and error in the which you have been nourished, your Majesty will find the liberty of my tongue nothing offensive."

These and the like scenes were not calculated to lessen the friction between the courtiers and

1 Knox, ii. 381.

the preachers, between Maitland and Knox. Knox was implacable, and no entreaties, no considerations of policy or expediency, would induce him to moderate the vehemence of his "railings," or the directness of his "applications." It was after one of these characteristic outbursts that Lethington, we are told, “in open audience gave himself unto the devill" if ever from that day he should regard what became of the ministers. "And let them bark and blaw," he added, "as loud as they list." The breach between the two factions was complete. Knox thundered against the Protestant apostates; while Maitland's mocking retort, "we must recant and burn our Bill, for the preachers are angry," added fuel to the flame. We need not wonder that a politic statesman who had all along been anxiously working for concord should have been bitterly mortified by what he must have regarded as gross and criminal indiscretion; but it was not until he had convinced himself that Knox was irreconcilable, and that it was impossible on any terms to win him to a happier and less combative mood, that he gave unrestrained expression to his displeasure. "The Secretar burst out in a piece of his choler."

One more attempt was made by the ecclesiastical courts, before the Darnley marriage, to deprive Mary of her Mass. The General Assem