bably unfavourable to Knox, as we shall argue when the
subject later presents itself.

Finally--"the votes of the Lords prevailed against the ministers"; the
Queen was allowed her Mass, but Lethington, a minister of the Queen, did
not consult a foreigner as to the rights of her subjects against her
creed.

The lenity of Lord James was of sudden growth. At Stirling he and Argyll
had gallantly caused the priests to leave the choir "with broken heads
and bloody ears," the Queen weeping. So Randolph reported to Cecil
(September 24).

Why her brother, foremost to insult Mary and her faith, unless Randolph
errs, in September, took her part in a few weeks, we do not know. At
Perth, Mary was again offended, and suffered in health by reason of the
pageants; "they did too plainly condemn the errors of the world. . . . I
hear she is troubled with such sudden passions after any great unkindness
or grief of mind," says Randolph. She was seldom free from such godly
chastisements. At Perth, however, some one gave her a cross of five
diamonds with pendant pearls.

Meanwhile the statesmen did not obey the Ministers as men ought to obey
God: a claim not easily granted by carnal politicians.

CHAPTER XV: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued), 1561-1564

Had Mary been a mere high-tempered and high-spirited girl, easily harmed
in health by insults to herself and her creed, she might now have turned
for support to Huntly, Cassilis, Montrose, and the other Earls who were
Catholic or "unpersuaded." Her great-grandson, Charles II., when as
young as she now was, did make the "Start"--the schoolboy attempt to run
away from the Presbyterians to the loyalists of the North. But Mary had
more self-control.

The artful Randolph found himself as hardly put to it now, in diplomacy,
as the Cardinal's murderers had done, in war, when they met the
scientific soldier, Strozzi. "The trade is now clean cut off from me,"
wrote Randolph (October 27); "I have to traffic now with other merchants
than before. They know the value of their wares, and in all places how
the market goeth. . . . Whatsoever policy is in all the chief and best
practised heads of France; whatsoever craft, falsehood, or deceit is in
all the subtle brains of Scotland," said the unscrupulous agent, "is
either fresh in this woman's memory, or she can bring it out with a wet
finger." {205}

Mary, in fact, was in the hands of Lethington (a pensioner of Elizabeth)
and of Lo