ad not
asserted, and what she had asserted about their dealings with England
they did not venture to deny; "whereby," says Spottiswoode in his
"History," "it seemed there was some dealing that way for expelling the
Frenchmen, which they would not deny, and thought not convenient as then
openly to profess." {139b} The task of giving the lie to the Regent when
she spoke truth was left to the pen of Knox.

Meanwhile, at Dunbar, Mary of Guise was in evil case. She had sounded
Erskine, the commander of the Castle, who, she hoped, would stand by her.
But she had no money to pay her French troops, who were becoming
mutinous, and d'Oysel "knew not to what Saint to vow himself." The Earl
of Huntly, before he would serve the Crown, {139c} insisted on a promise
of the Earldom of Moray; this desire was to be his ruin. Huntly was a
double dealer; "the gay Gordons" were ever brave, loyal, and bewildered
by their chiefs. By July 22, the Scots heard of the fatal wound of Henri
II., to their encouragement. Both parties were in lack of money, and the
forces of the Congregation were slipping home by hundreds. Mary,
according to Knox, was exciting the Duke against Argyll and Lord James,
by the charge that Lord James was aiming at the crown, in which if he
succeeded, he would deprive not only her daughter of the sovereignty, but
the Hamiltons of the succession. Young and ambitious as Lord James then
was, and heavily as he was suspected, even in England, it is most
improbable that he ever thought of being king.

The Congregation refused to let Argyll and Lord James hold conference
with the Regent. Other discussions led to no result, except waste of
time, to the Regent's advantage; and, on July 22, Mary, in council with
Lord Erskine, Huntly, and the Duke, resolved to march against the
Reformers at Edinburgh, who had no time to call in their scattered levies
in the West, Angus, and Fife. Logan of Restalrig, lately an ally of the
godly, surrendered Leith, over which he was the superior, to d'Oysel; and
the Congregation decided to accept a truce (July 23-24).

At this point Knox's narrative becomes so embroiled that it reminds one
of nothing so much as of Claude Nau's attempts to glide past an awkward
point in the history of his employer, Mary Stuart. I have puzzled over
Knox's narrative again and again, and hope that I have disentangled the
knotted and slippery thread.

It is not wonderful that the brethren made terms, for the "Hi