hy should the Regent have been "ashamed" to tell the truth? If the
bearer showed a false and forged treaty, the Congregation must have
denounced it, and produced the genuine document with the signatures. Far
from that, in a reply (from internal evidence written by Knox), they
admit, "neither do we _here_ {149c} allege the breaking of the
Appointment made at Leith (which, nevertheless, has manifestly been
done), but"--and here the writer wanders into quite other questions.
Moreover, Knox gives another reply to the Regent, "by some men," in which
they write "we dispute not so much whether the bringing in of more
Frenchmen be violating of the Appointment, which the Queen and her
faction cannot deny to be manifestly broken by them in more cases than
one," in no way connected with the French. One of these cases will
presently be stated--it is comic enough to deserve record--but, beyond
denial, the brethren could not, and did not even attempt to make out
their charge as to the Regent's breach of truce by bringing in new, or
retaining old, French forces.

Our historians, and the biographers of Knox, have not taken the trouble
to unravel this question of the treaty of July 24. But the behaviour of
the Lords and of Knox seems characteristic, and worthy of examination.

It is not argued that Mary of Guise was, or became, incapable of worse
than dissimulation (a case of forgery by her in the following year is
investigated in Appendix B). But her practices at this time were such as
Knox could not throw the first stone at. Her French advisers were in
fact "perplexed," as Throckmorton wrote to Elizabeth (August 8). They
made preparations for sending large reinforcements: they advised
concession in religion: they waited on events, and the Regent could only
provide, at Leith (which was jealous of Edinburgh and anxious to be made
a free burgh), a place whither she could fly in peril. Meantime she
would vainly exert her woman's wit among many dangers.

Knox, too, was exerting his wit in his own way. Busied in preaching and
in acting as secretary and diplomatic agent to the Congregation as he
was, he must also have begun in or not much later than August 1559, the
part of his "History" first written by him, namely Book II. That book,
as he wrote to a friend named Railton {150} on October 23, 1559 (when
much of it was already penned), is meant as a defence of his party
against the charge of sedition, and was clearly intended (we