ce, ... he tuk him to his chamber and most happelie and
comfortablie departed this lyff."[249]

With this kindly notice by his youthful admirer this lecture would have
ended, had I not promised to the late Dean Stanley several years ago
that, when a suitable opportunity occurred, I would not fail publicly to
advert to a shameless misrepresentation of the closing scene to which he
had directed my attention. This originated with Archibald Hamilton,
already referred to as one of the two masters of the New College, who
apostatised from the Protestant faith, and after his flight to the
Continent published the most barefaced lies of his old antagonist and
the noble men who were associated with him in his hard battle and
well-earned triumph. These lies were exposed and refuted at the time by
Principal Smeton of Glasgow, himself a convert from that Society of
Jesus which Hamilton ultimately joined. But as they have been revived in
our own day, and distributed in the form of a tract by Popish emissaries
at the doors of Protestant churches in London, and as one of a series
bearing the sensational title of "Death-bed Scenes," I shall, in
fulfilment of my promise, subjoin a brief account of the reformer's last
illness and death, taken almost exclusively from the contemporary
narratives of Bannatyne and Smeton, the former of whom was an
eye-witness, and the latter of whom had full information from
Lawson,[250] who also was an eye-witness of all. This, I feel assured,
is all that is required to set matters in their true light.

[Sidenote: Popish Calumny.]

The vague charges of immorality brought against the reformer by those
calumniators, ancient and modern, may be dismissed at once as nothing
more than the stock-in-trade of hard-pressed controversialists in the
sixteenth century. Had there been the slightest foundation for them,
some of Knox's many opponents in Scotland--Ninian Winzet, or the Abbot
of Crossraguel, or Tyrie the Jesuit, or Hamilton himself before he left
the country--would not have scrupled openly to upbraid him with them.
Neither would the culprits among the Protestant clergy and laity, whom
at various times he subjected to so rigorous a discipline, have borne
this patiently at his hands had he himself been a known offender. It was
his character which gave him his influence both at home and abroad, both
with friends and with foes, and could it have been successfully
assailed, it would not have been left to two Jesu