cal actions." {207b}

Knox later made Chatelherault promise this obedience; what his views were
in November 1561 we know not. Lord James was already distrusted by his
old godly friends; it was thought he would receive what he had long
desired, the Earldom of Moray (November 11, 1561), and the precise
professors meditated a fresh revolution. "It must yet come to a new
day," they said. {207c} Those about Arran were discontented, and nobody
was more in his confidence than Knox, but at this time Arran was absent
from Edinburgh; was at St. Andrews.

Meanwhile, at Court, "the ladies are merry, dancing, lusty, and fair,"
wrote Randolph, who flirted with Mary Beaton (November 18); and long
afterwards, in 1578, when she was Lady Boyne, spoke of her as "a very
dear friend." Knox complains that the girls danced when they "got the
house alone"; not a public offence! He had his intelligencers in the
palace.

There was, on November 16, a panic in the unguarded palace: {208a} "the
poor damsels were left alone," while men hid in fear of nobody knew what,
except a rumour that Arran was coming, with his congregational friends,
"to take away the Queen." The story was perhaps a fable, but Arran had
been uttering threats. Mary, however, expected to be secured by an
alliance with Elizabeth. "The accord between the two Queens will quite
overthrow them" (the Bishops), "and they say plainly that she cannot
return a true Christian woman," writes Randolph. {208b}

Lethington and Randolph both suspected that if Mary abandoned idolatry,
it would be after conference with Elizabeth, and rather as being
converted by that fair theologian than as compelled by her subjects.
Unhappily Elizabeth never would meet Mary, who, for all that we know,
might at this hour have adopted the Anglican via media, despite her
protests to Knox and to the Pope of her fidelity to Rome. Like Henri
IV., she may at this time have been capable of preferring a crown--that
of England--to a dogma. Her Mass, Randolph wrote, "is rather for despite
than devotion, for those that use it care not a straw for it, and jest
sometimes against it." {208c}

Randolph, at this juncture, reminded Mary that advisers of the Catholic
party had prevented James V. from meeting Henry VIII. She answered,
"Something is reserved for us that was not then," possibly hinting at her
conversion. Lord James shared the hopes of Lethington and Randolph. "The
Papists storm, thinking the meeting