collection of the Earl of Morton:
knox5.jpg]

Moray, Ochiltree, Pitarro, and many others being now exiles in England,
whose Queen had subsidised and repudiated them and their revolution,
things went hard with the preachers. For a whole year at least (December
1565-66) their stipends were not paid, the treasury being exhausted by
military and other expenses, and Pitarro being absent. At the end of
December, Knox and his colleague, Craig, were ordered by the General
Assembly to draw up and print a service for a general Fast, to endure
from the last Sunday in February to the first in March, 1566. One cause
alleged is that the Queen's conversion had been hoped for, but now she
said that she would "maintain and defend" {248c} her own faith. She had
said no less to Knox at their first interview, but now she had really
written, when invited to abolish her Mass, that her subjects may worship
as they will, but that she will not desert her religion. {249a} It was
also alleged that the godly were to be destroyed all over Europe, in
accordance with decrees of the Council of Trent. Moreover, vice,
manslaughter, and oppression of the poor continued, prices of commodities
rose, and work was scamped. The date of the Fast was fixed, not to
coincide with Lent, but because it preceded an intended meeting of
Parliament, {249b} a Parliament interrupted by the murder of Riccio, and
the capture of the Queen. No games were to be played during the two
Sundays of the Fast, which looks as if they were still permitted on other
Sundays. The appointed lessons were from Judges, Esther, Chronicles,
Isaiah, and Esdras; the New Testament, apparently, supplied nothing
appropriate. It seldom did. The lay attendants of the Assembly of
Christmas Day which decreed the Fast, were Morton, Mar, Lindsay,
Lethington, with some lairds.

The Protestants must have been alarmed, in February 1566, by a report, to
which Randolph gave circulation, that Mary had joined a Catholic League,
with the Pope, the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Duke of Savoy, and
others. Lethington may have believed this; at all events he saw no hope
of pardon for Moray and his abettors--"no certain way, unless we chop at
the very root, you know where it lieth" (February 9). {249c} Probably he
means the murder of Riccio, not of the Queen. Bedford said that Mary had
not yet signed the League. {249d} We are aware of no proof that there
was any League to sign, and though Mary was b