the Hamiltons. The Duke was returning from France, "to restore Satan
to his kingdom," with the assistance of the Guises. Knox mentions an
attempt to assassinate Moray, now Regent, which is obscure. "I live as a
man already dead from all civil things." Thus he wrote to Wood, Moray's
agent, then in England on the affair of the Casket Letters (September 10,
1568).

He had already (February 14) declined to gratify Wood by publishing his
"History." He would not permit it to appear during his life, as "it will
rather hurt me than profit them" (his readers). He was, very naturally,
grieved that the conduct of men was not conformable to "the truth of God,
now of some years manifest." He was not concerned to revenge his own
injuries "by word or writ," and he foresaw schism in England over
questions of dress and rites. {258a}

He was neglected. "Have not thine oldest and stoutest acquaintance"
(Moray, or Kirkcaldy of Grange?) "buried thee in present oblivion, and
art thou not in that estate, by age, {258b} that nature itself calleth
thee from the pleasure of things temporal?" (August 19, 1569).

"_In trouble impatient, tending to desperation_," Knox had said of
himself. He was still unhappy. "Foolish Scotland" had "disobeyed God by
sparing the Queen's life," and now the proposed Norfolk marriage of Mary
and her intended restoration were needlessly dreaded. A month later,
Lethington, thrown back on Mary by his own peril for his share in
Darnley's murder, writes to the Queen that some ministers are
reconcilable, "but Nox I think be inflexible." {259a}

A year before Knox wrote his melancholy letter, just cited, he had some
curious dealings with the English Puritans. In 1566 many of them had
been ejected from their livings, and, like the Scottish Catholics, they
"assembled in woods and private houses to worship God." {259b} The
edifying controversies between these precisians and Grindal, the Bishop
of London, are recorded by Strype. The bishop was no zealot for
surplices and the other momentous trifles which agitate the human
conscience, but Elizabeth insisted on them; and "Her Majesty's Government
must be carried on." The precisians had deserted the English Liturgy for
the Genevan Book of Common Order; both sides were appealing to Beza, in
Geneva, and were wrangling about the interpretation of that Pontiff's
words. {259c}

Calvin had died in 1564, but the Genevan Church and Beza were still
umpires, whose decisi