lesiastical property, by which those in actual possession
received two-thirds, the reformed ministers one-third, was a further
ground of quarrel with the new government. The delay of Mary to confirm
the late religious settlement also gave rise to the greatest anxiety on
the part of Knox and his brother ministers. In view of the precarious
interests of the great cause, Knox spoke out with such frankness as to
alienate the most powerful noble in the country, and the one whom he
respected most--Lord James Stuart, afterward the Regent Moray. The
marriage of Mary with Darnley (1565), again, however, led them to common
counsels, as both saw in this marriage the most serious menace against
the new religion. In the subsequent revolt, headed by Moray and the
other Protestant nobles, Knox nevertheless took no part, and remained at
his charge in Edinburgh. But after the murder of Rizzio, he deemed it
wise, considering Mary's disposition toward him, to withdraw to Kyle, in
Ayrshire, where he appears to have written the greater part of his
history.

The events of the next two years--the murder of Darnley, Mary's marriage
with Bothwell, and her subsequent flight into England--again threw the
management of affairs into the hands of the Protestant party; and under
Moray as regent the acts of 1560, in favor of the reformed religion,
were duly ratified by the estates of the realm. As in the former
revolution, Knox was still the same formidable force the nobles had to
reckon with; and at Stirling, at the coronation of James VI. (1567), he
preached in that strain which gave his sermons the character and
importance of public manifestoes. The assassination of Moray, in 1570,
and the consequent formation of a strong party in favor of Mary, once
more endangered the cause to which he had devoted his life, and the
possession of the castle of Edinburgh by the queen's supporters forced
him to remove to St. Andrews for safety. He had already had a stroke of
apoplexy, and he was now but the wreck of his former self, but his
spirit was as indomitable as ever. The description of him at this
period, by James Melville, can never be omitted in any account of Knox.
"Being in St. Andrews, he was very weak. I saw him every day of his
doctrine go hulie and fear with a furring of martricks about his neck, a
staff in the one hand, and good, godly Richart Ballanden, his servant,
holding up the other, oxter from the abbey to the parish church; and be
the said Ri