Chapter 15

KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued), 1561-1564

Had Mary been a mere high-tempered and high-spirited girl, easily harmed in health by insults to herself and her creed, she might now have turned for support to Huntly, Cassilis, Montrose, and the other Earls who were Catholic or "unpersuaded." Her great-grandson, Charles II., when as young as she now was, did make the "Start"--the schoolboy attempt to run away from the Presbyterians to the loyalists of the North. But Mary had more self-control.

The artful Randolph found himself as hardly put to it now, in diplomacy, as the Cardinal's murderers had done, in war, when they met the scientific soldier, Strozzi. "The trade is now clean cut off from me," wrote Randolph (October 27); "I have to traffic now with other merchants than before. They know the value of their wares, and in all places how the market goeth. . . . Whatsoever policy is in all the chief and best practised heads of France; whatsoever craft, falsehood, or deceit is in all the subtle brains of Scotland," said the unscrupulous agent, "is either fresh in this woman's memory, or she can bring it out with a wet finger." {205}

Mary, in fact, was in the hands of Lethington (a pensioner of Elizabeth) and of Lord James: "subtle brains" enough. She was the "merchandise," and Lethington and Lord James wished to make Elizabeth acknowledge the Scottish Queen as her successor, the alternative being to seek her price as a wife for an European prince. An "union of hearts" with England might conceivably mean Mary's acceptance of the Anglican faith. It is not a kind thing to say about Mary, but I suspect that, if assured of the English succession, she might have gone over to the Prayer Book. In the first months of her English captivity (July 1568) Mary again dallied with the idea of conversion, for the sake of freedom. She told the Spanish Ambassador that "she would sooner be murdered," but if she could have struck her bargain with Elizabeth, I doubt that she would have chosen the Prayer Book rather than the dagger or the bowl. {206a} Her conversion would have been bitterness as of wormwood to Knox. In his eyes Anglicanism was "a bastard religion," "a mingle-mangle now commanded in your kirks." "Peculiar services appointed for Saints' days, diverse Collects as they falsely call them in remembrance of this or that Saint . . . are in my conscience no small portion of papistical superstition." {206b} "Crossing in Baptism is a diabolical invention; kneeling at the Lord's table, mummelling," (uttering the responses, apparently), "or singing of the Litany." All these practices are "diabolical inventions," in Knox's candid opinion, "with Mr. Parson's pattering of his constrained prayers, and with the mass-munging of Mr. Vicar, and of his wicked companions . . ." (A blank in