are enterprise to
admonish a Princess so honourable, endued with wisdom and graces
singular.' Those whom Knox represented were a small minority of
Scotchmen; but that did not prevent him demanding of the Regent far more
than mere neutrality or 'indifferency' between the contending parties.
He demands of her the reform of both religion and the church. He admits
that 'your Grace's _power_ is not so free as a public Reformation
perchance would require'; you 'cannot hastily abolish superstition, ...
which to a public Reformation is requisite and necessary. But if the
zeal of God's glory be fervent in your Grace's heart, you will not by
wicked laws maintain idolatry, neither will you suffer the fury of
Bishops to murder and devour.' The Queen Regent was not disposed to go
very far with the bishops, but still less was she fervent for God's
glory and public Reformation. Accordingly, on the first Court day she
handed Knox's letter, perhaps unread, to the Bishop of Glasgow, with the
words, 'Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquil.' The unwise jest came to
Knox's ears, and some years after he published his letter with resentful
additions and interpolations. In these he assumed--much too soon--that
there was no longer hope of the Regent becoming personally convinced of
the Evangel. But he at the same time modified his 'Petition' on behalf
of his party to this, 'that our doctrine may be tried by the plain word
of God, and that liberty be granted to us to utter and declare our minds
at large in every article and point which are now in controversy'; and
on his own behalf and 'in the name of the Lord Jesus, that with
_indifferency_ I may be heard to preach, to reason, and to dispute in
that cause.'

But now, in July 1556, letters came to Knox in Edinburgh from his
congregation in Geneva, 'commanding him in God's name, as he was their
chosen pastor, to repair unto them for their comfort.' He at once
complied, sending before him from Norham to Dieppe his wife and her
mother. Scotland was not yet ripe. The lay professors of the Evangel
indeed were not seriously molested after his departure. But on the other
hand Knox himself was at once cited to appear in Edinburgh, condemned in
absence as a contumacious heretic, and burned at the Cross in the High
Street--in effigy. Neither this, nor his daily work in Geneva, had the
effect of withdrawing him for a day from his solicitude for his native
country. On leaving it he wrote an admirable 'Lette