in
those dayis, (_and we fear but over inward with hir yit_,) said," &c.
See page 368 of this volume. This must necessarily have been written
during the Queen Regent's life, or previously to June 1560. During the
following month, after noticing the Earl of Arran's escape from France,
and the imprisonment of his younger brother, Lord David Hamilton, it is
stated, "For the same tyme, the said Frensche King, seing he could not
have the Erle him self, gart put his youngar brother ... in strait
prisoun, _quhair he yitt remaneis, to witt, in the moneth of October,
the yeir of God_ 1559." See page 383. In like manner, in a letter of
intelligence, dated at Hamilton, 12th October 1559, and addressed to
Cecil, Randolph says, "Since Nesbot went from hence, the Duke never
harde out of Fraunce, _nor newes of his son the Lord David_."--(Sadler's
State Papers, vol. i. p. 500.) We might have supposed that his restraint
was not of long duration, as he is named among the hostages left in
England, at the treaty of Berwick, 27th February 1559-60; a circumstance
of which Knox could not have been ignorant, as he gives a copy of the
confirmation of the treaty by the Duke of Chastelherault and the Lords
of the Congregation; but it appears from one of the articles in the
treaty of peace in July, that Lord David Hamilton, who was still a
prisoner at Bois de St. Vincent, in France, then obtained liberty to
return to Scotland; and he arrived at Edinburgh in October 1560. We are
therefore warranted to infer that this portion of the Second Book of his
History, must have been written towards the end of the year 1559.

Knox himself in his general Preface, says, the intention was to have
limited the period of the History from the year 1558, until the arrival
of Queen Mary from France to assume the government in this country, in
August 1561; thus extending the period originally prescribed beyond the
actual attainment of the great object at which the Reformers aimed, in
the overthrow of Popish superstition, and the establishment by civil
authority of the Protestant faith, which was actually secured by the
proceedings of the Parliament that met at Edinburgh on the 1st of August
1560. But he further informs us, that he was persuaded not only to add
the First Book as an Introduction, but to continue the Narrative to a
later period. This plan of extending the work he carried into effect in
the year 1566, when the First and Fourth Books were chiefly written,