sword; his mischievous son John was taken
and executed, Mary being pleased with her success, and declaring that
Huntly thought "to have married her where he would," {221c} and to have
slain her brother. John Gordon confessed to the murder plot. {221d} His
eldest brother, Lord Gordon, who had tried to enlist Bothwell and the
Hamiltons, lay long in prison (his sister married Bothwell just before
Riccio's murder). The Queen had punished the disobedience which she
"went to seek," and Moray was safe in his rich earldom, while a heavy
blow was dealt at the Catholicism which Huntly had protected. {222a}
Cardinal Guise reports her success to de Rennes, in Austria, with
triumph, and refers to an autograph letter of hers, of which Lethington's
draft has lately perished by fire, unread by historians. As the Cardinal
reports that she says she is trying to win her subjects back to the
Church, "in which she wishes to live and die" (January 30, 1562-63),
Lethington cannot be the author of that part of her lost letter. {222b}

Knox meanwhile, much puzzled by the news from the north, was in the
western counties. He induced the lairds of Ayrshire to sign a Protestant
band, and he had a controversy with the Abbot of Crosraguel. In
misapplication of texts the abbot was even more eccentric than Knox,
though he only followed St. Jerome. In his "History" Knox "cannot
certainly say whether there was any secret paction and confederacy
between the Queen herself and Huntly." {222c} Knox decides that though
Mary executed John Gordon and other rebels, yet "it was the destruction
of others that she sought," namely, of her brother, whom she hated "for
his godliness and upright plainness." {222d} His upright simplicity had
won him an earldom and the destruction of his rival! He and Lethington
may have exaggerated Huntly's iniquities in council with Mary, but the
rumours reported against her by Knox could only be inspired by the
credulity of extreme ill-will. He flattered himself that he kept the
Hamiltons quiet, and, at a supper with Randolph in November, made
Chatelherault promise to be a good subject in civil matters, and a good
Protestant in religion.

Knox says that preaching was done with even unusual vehemence in winter,
when his sermon against the Queen's dancing for joy over some unknown
Protestant misfortune was actually delivered, and the good seed fell on
ground not wholly barren. The Queen's French and Scots musicians would
no