d
thoughts and pious fears. Some new call, he foresaw, would soon be made
on the protestants, to stand forth again in the gap that the Queen's
arts had sapped in the bulwarks of their religious liberty, and he
resolved to be ready against the hour of danger. So, taking his wife and
Agnes Kilspinnie with him, he went in the spring to Edinburgh, and hired
a lodging for them; and on the same night he presented himself at the
lodging of the Lord James Stuart, who had some time before been created
Earl of Murray; but the Earl was gone with the Queen to Loch Leven. Sir
Alexander Douglas, however, the master of his Lordship's horse, was then
on the eve of following him with John Knox, to whom the Queen had sent a
peremptory message, requiring his attendance; and Sir Alexander invited
my grandfather to come with them; the which invitation he very joyfully
accepted, on account of the happy occasion of travelling in the
sanctified company of that brave worthy.

In the journey, however, save in the boat when they crossed the ferry,
he showed but little of his precious conversation; for the knight and
the Reformer rode on together some short distance before their train,
earnestly discoursing, and seemingly they wished not to be overheard.
But when they were all seated in the ferry-boat, the ardour of the
preacher, which on no occasion would be reined in, led him to continue
speaking, by which it would seem that they had been conversing anent the
Queen's prejudices in matters of religion and the royal authority.

"When I last spoke with her Highness," said John Knox, "she laid sore to
my charge, that I had brought the people to receive a religion different
from what their princes allowed, asking sharply, if this was not
contrary to the Divine command, which enjoins that subjects should obey
their rulers; so that I was obliged to contend plainly, that true
religion derived its origin and authority, not from princes, but from
God; that princes were often most ignorant respecting it, and that
subjects never could be bound to frame their religious sentiments
according to the pleasure of their rulers, else the Hebrews ought to
have conformed to the idolatry of Pharaoh, and Daniel and his associates
to that of Nebuchadnezzar, and the primitive Christians to that of the
Roman emperors."

"And what could her Highness answer to this?" said Sir Alexander.

"She lacketh not the gift of a shrewd and ready wit," replied Master
Knox; for she