ion, as
Secretary of the Queen, he had scrupled, without her consent, to ask a
foreigner whether her subjects might prevent her from enjoying the rites
of her own religion--for that was what the "controversies" between her
Highness and her subjects really and confessedly meant. {241a}

Knox was now requested to consult Calvin, "and the learned in other
Kirks, to know their judgment in that question." The question, judging
from Makgill's interpellation, was "whether subjects might lawfully take
her Mass from the Queen." {241b} As we know, Knox had already put the
question to Calvin by a letter of October 24, 1561, and so had the
anonymous writer of November 18, 1561, whom I identify with Arran. Knox
now refused to write to "Mr. Calvin, and the learned of other Kirks,"
saying (I must quote him textually, or be accused of misrepresentation),
"I myself am not only fully resolved in conscience, but also I have heard
the judgments in this, and all other things that I have affirmed in this
Realm, of the most godly and most learned that be known in Europe. I
come not to this Realm without their resolution; and for my assurance I
have the handwritings of many; and therefore if I should move the same
question again, what else should I do but either show my own ignorance
and forgetfulness, or else inconstancy?" {241c} He therefore said that
his opponents might themselves "write and complain upon him," and so
learn "the plain minds" of the learned--but nobody took the trouble.
Knox's defence was worded with the skill of a notary. He said that he
had "heard the judgments" of "the learned and godly"; he did not say what
these judgments were. Calvin, Morel, Bullinger, and such men, we know,
entirely differed from his extreme ideas. He "came not without their
resolution," or approval, to Scotland, but that was not the question at
issue.

If Knox had received from Calvin favourable replies to his own letter,
and Arran's, of October 24, November 18, 1561, can any one doubt that he
would now have produced them, unless he did not wish the brethren to find
out that he himself had written without their knowledge? We know what
manner of answers he received, in 1554, orally from Calvin, in writing
from Bullinger, to his questions about resistance to the civil power.
{242a} I am sceptical enough to suppose that, if Knox had now possessed
letters from Calvin, justifying the propositions which he was
maintaining, such as that "the peop