of the queens will overthrow Mass and
all."

The Ministers of Mary, les politiques, indulged in dreams equally
distasteful to the Catholics and to the more precise of the godly; dreams
that came through the Ivory Gate; with pictures of the island united, and
free from the despotism of Giant Pope and Giant Presbyter. {209} A
schism between the brethren and their old leaders and advisers, Lord
James and Lethington, was the result. At the General Assembly of
December 1561, the split was manifest. The parties exchanged
recriminations, and there was even question of the legality of such
conventions as the General Assembly. Lethington asked whether the Queen
"allowed" the gathering. Knox (apparently) replied, "Take from us the
freedom of Assemblies, and take from us the Evangel . . ." He defended
them as necessary for order among the preachers; but the objection, of
course, was to their political interferences. The question was to be
settled for Cromwell in his usual way, with a handful of hussars. It was
now determined that the Queen might send Commissioners to the Assembly to
represent her interests.

The plea of the godly that Mary should ratify the Book of Discipline was
countered by the scoffs of Lethington. He and his brothers ever
tormented Knox by persiflage. Still the preachers must be supported, and
to that end, by a singular compromise, the Crown assumed dominion over
the property of the old Church, a proceeding which Mary, if a good
Catholic, could not have sanctioned. The higher clergy retained
two-thirds of their benefices, and the other third was to be divided
between the preachers and the Queen. Vested rights, those of the
prelates, and the interests of the nobles to whom, in the troubles, they
had feued parts of their property, were thus secured; while the preachers
were put off with a humble portion. Among the abbeys, that of St.
Andrews, held by the good Lord James, was one of the richest. He appears
to have retained all the wealth, for, as Bishop Keith says, "the grand
gulf that swallowed up the whole extent of the thirds were pensions given
gratis by the Queen to those about the Court . . . of which last the Earl
of Moray was always sure to obtain the thirds of his priories of St.
Andrews and Pittenweem." In all, the whole reformed clergy received
annually (but not in 1565-66) 24,231 pounds, 17s. 7d. Scots, while Knox
and four superintendents got a few chalders of wheat and "bear." In
15