eminine ruler never forgave
his book. Meantime he came, as we saw, into more personal contact with
the Queen-Regent of Scotland, and had the highest hopes from her.
Ultimately she disappointed these; but even when she was deposed by the
nobles, to whom he had originally looked as the agents in the Reform,
Knox insisted on keeping open a door for her restoration, in the event
of her coming in the meantime to think with himself. And now her
daughter was come to her native country as Queen in her own right. Knox,
taught by experience, had already taken part in private overtures to
her, and was no longer disposed to stand on any theoretical difficulty
as to the rule of a woman. The practical difficulties were enough.

And the practical difficulties were tremendous. Had Mary ruled as a
modern constitutional Queen, with toleration of religion all around,
things would have been easy. She would have enjoyed the freedom which
she granted to the lowest of her subjects, and every one of them would
have supported her enthusiastically against domestic and foreign
aggression. But the reign of religion which, according to her first
proclamation, she, on her arrival, 'found publicly and universally
standing,' was very different. It was one by which half the lieges were
forbidden the exercise of their own religion and of their ordinary
worship; and by which Scotland and all its rulers were pledged to a
faith she had been trained as a child to detest, and as a Queen to
suppress. The situation was impossible from the first. The only question
was, how long it would last.

Knox would have met it fairly by making her acknowledgment of the
Protestant Acts and Confession a condition of her being acknowledged by
Scotland. And had the fact been known that Mary, by three secret
documents, executed just before her childless marriage to the Dauphin,
had already handed over her native kingdom, in the event of her having
no issue, to the King of France, the crisis, which was to be postponed
for so many years, might have come at once. But an intermediate plan
was arranged in Paris through 'the man whom all the godly did most
reverence,' and whose weight of character was gradually giving him the
foremost place in Scotland--Lord James Stewart, the Queen's natural
brother. Mary, quick to understand men, put herself under her brother's
guidance, and the result was that she was joyfully received in
Edinburgh, and a proclamation was issued forbidding, on t