t play or sing at the Queen's Christmas-day Mass, whether pricked in
heart by conscience, or afraid for their lives. "Her poor soul is so
troubled for the preservation of her silly Mass that she knoweth not
where to turn for defence of it," says Randolph. {223a} These
persecutions may have gone far to embitter the character of the victim.

Mr. Froude is certainly not an advocate of Mary Stuart, rather he is
conspicuously the reverse. But he remarks that when she determined to
marry Darnley, "divide Scotland," and trust to her Catholic party, she
did so because she was "weary of the mask which she had so long worn, and
unable to endure any longer these wild insults to her creed and herself."
{223b} She had, in fact, given the policy of submission to "wild
insults" rather more than a fair chance; she had, for a spirited girl,
been almost incredibly long-suffering, when "barbarously baited," as
Charles I. described his own treatment by the preachers and the
Covenanters.

CHAPTER XVI: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued): 1563-1564

The new year, 1563, found Knox purging the Kirk from that fallen brother,
Paul Methuen. This preacher had borne the burden and heat of the day in
1557-58, erecting, as we have seen, the first "reformed" Kirk, that of
the Holy Virgin, in Dundee, and suffering some inconvenience, if no great
danger, from the clergy of the religion whose sacred things he overthrew.
He does not appear to have been one of the more furious of the new
apostles. Contrasted with John Brabner, "a vehement man inculcating the
law and pain thereof," Paul is described as "a milder man, preaching the
evangel of grace and remission of sins in the blood of Christ." {224a}

Paul was at this time minister of Jedburgh. He had "an ancient matron"
to wife, recommended, perhaps, by her property, and she left him for two
months with a servant maid. Paul fell, but behaved not ill to the mother
of his child, sending her "money and clothes at various times." Knox
tried the case at Jedburgh; Paul was excommunicated, and fled the realm,
sinking so low, it seems, as to take orders in the Church of England.
Later he returned--probably he was now penniless--"and prostrated himself
before the whole brethren with weeping and howling." He was put to such
shameful and continued acts of public penance up and down the country
that any spirit which he had left awoke in him, and the Kirk knew him no
more. Thus "the world might see wha