the party of revolt
against the Church, while the queen-mother's preference of French over
Scottish advisers, and her small force of trained French soldiers in
garrisons, caused even the Scottish Catholics to hold France in fear and
suspicion. The French counsellors (1556) urged increased taxation for
purposes of national defence against England; but the nobles would rather
be invaded every year than tolerate a standing army in place of their old
irregular feudal levies. Their own independence of the Crown was dearer
to the nobles and gentry than safety from their old enemy. They might
have reflected that a standing army of Scots, officered by themselves,
would be a check on the French soldiers in garrison.

Perplexed and opposed by the great clan of Hamilton, whose chief, Arran,
was nearest heir to the crown, Mary of Guise was now anxious to
conciliate the Protestants, and there was a "blink," as the Covenanters
later said,--a lull in persecution.

After Knox's release from the French galleys in 1549, he had played, as
we saw, a considerable part in the affairs of the English Church, and in
the making of the second Prayer-Book of Edward VI., but had fled abroad
on the accession of Mary Tudor. From Dieppe he had sent a tract to
England, praying God to stir up some Phineas or Jehu to shed the blood of
"abominable idolaters,"--obviously of Mary of England and Philip of
Spain. On earlier occasions he had followed Calvin in deprecating such
sanguinary measures. The Scot, after a stormy period of quarrels with
Anglican refugees in Frankfort, moved to Geneva, where the city was under
a despotism of preachers and of Calvin. Here Knox found the model of
Church government which, in a form if possible more extreme, he later
planted in Scotland.

There, in 1549-52, the Church, under Archbishop Hamilton, Beaton's
successor, had been confessing her iniquities in Provincial Councils, and
attempting to purify herself on the lines of the tolerant and charitable
Catechism issued by the Archbishop in 1552. Apparently a _modus vivendi_
was being sought, and Protestants were inclined to think that they might
be "occasional conformists" and attend Mass without being false to their
convictions. But in this brief lull Knox came over to Scotland at the
end of harvest, in 1555. On this point of occasional conformity he was
fixed. The Mass was idolatry, and idolatry, by the law of God, was a
capital offence. Idolaters must be conv