see
why Lord James should have wished that Mary "might be stayed," unless he
merely dreaded her arrival while Elizabeth was in a bad temper. His
letter to Elizabeth of August 6 is incompatible with treachery on his
part. "Mr. Knox is determined to abide the uttermost, and others will
not leave him till God have taken his life and theirs together." Of what
were these heroes afraid? A "familiar," a witch, of Lady Huntly's
predicted that the Queen would never arrive. "If false, I would she were
burned for a witch," adds honest Randolph. Lethington deemed his "own
danger not least." Two galleys full of ladies are not so alarming; did
these men, practically hinting that English ships should stop their
Queen, think that the Catholics in Scotland were too strong for them?

Not a noble was present to meet Mary when in the fog and filth of Leith
she touched Scottish soil, except her natural brother, Lord Robert. {194}
The rest soon gathered with faces of welcome. She met some Robin Hood
rioters who lay under the law, and pardoned these roisterers (with their
excommunication could she interfere?), because, says Knox, she was
instructed that they had acted "in despite of the religion." Their
festival had been forbidden under the older religion, as it happens, in
1555, and was again forbidden later by Mary herself.

All was mirth till Sunday, when the Queen's French priest celebrated Mass
in her own chapel before herself, her three uncles, and Montrose. The
godly called for the priest's blood, but Lord James kept the door, and
his brothers protected the priest. Disappointed of blood, "the godly
departed with great grief of heart," collecting in crowds round Holyrood
in the afternoon. Next day the Council proclaimed that, till the Estates
assembled and deliberated, no innovation should be made in the religion
"publicly and universally standing." The Queen's servants and others
from France must not be molested--on pain of death, the usual empty
threat. They were assaulted, and nobody was punished for the offence.
Arran alone made a protest, probably written by Knox. Who but Knox could
have written that the Mass is "much more abominable and odious in the
sight of God" than murder! Many an honest brother was conspicuously of
the opinion which Arran's protest assigned to Omnipotence. Next Sunday
Knox "thundered," and later regretted that "I did not that I might have
done" (caused an armed struggle?), . . . "for God had