egging money both from Spain
and the Pope, she probably did not expect to procure more than tolerance
for her own religion. {250a} The rumours, however, must have had their
effect in causing apprehension. Moreover, Darnley, from personal
jealousy; Morton, from fear of losing the Seals; the Douglases, kinsmen
of Morton and Darnley; and the friends of the exiled nobles, seeing that
they were likely to be forfeited, conspired with Moray in England to be
Darnley's men, to slay Riccio, and to make the Queen subordinate to
Darnley, and "to fortify and maintain" the Protestant faith. Mary,
indeed, had meant to reintroduce the Spiritual Estate into Parliament, as
a means of assisting her Church; so she writes to Archbishop Beaton in
Paris. {250b}

Twelve wooden altars, to be erected in St. Giles's, are said by Knox's
continuator to have been found in Holyrood. {250c}

Mary's schemes, whatever they extended to, were broken by the murder of
Riccio in the evening of March 9. He was seized in her presence, and
dirked by fifty daggers outside of her room. Ruthven, who in June 1564
had come into Mary's good graces, and Morton were, with Darnley, the
leaders of the Douglas feud, and of the brethren.

The nobles might easily have taken, tried, and hanged Riccio, but they
yielded to Darnley and to their own excited passions, when once they had
torn him from the Queen. The personal pleasure of dirking the wretch
could not be resisted, and the danger of causing the Queen's miscarriage
and death may have entered into the plans of Darnley. Knox does not tell
the story himself; his "History" ends in June 1564. But "in plain terms"
he "lets the world understand what we mean," namely, that Riccio "was
justly punished," and that "the act" (of the murderers) was "most just
and most worthy of _all_ praise." {251a} This Knox wrote just after the
event, while the murderers were still in exile in England, where Ruthven
died--seeing a vision of angels! Knox makes no drawback to the entirely
and absolutely laudable character of the deed. He goes out of his way to
tell us "in plain terms what we mean," in a digression from his account
of affairs sixteen years earlier. Thus one fails to understand the
remark, that "of the manner in which the deed was done we may be certain
that Knox would disapprove as vehemently as any of his contemporaries."
{251b} The words may be ironical, for vehement disapproval was not
conspicuous among Protestant