t and soldiers to meet the powerful French force which would
now surely come. But the reign of Francis {286} II. was brief. In
1560 tidings came that he was dead. Mary now resolved to return to her
own kingdom. Elizabeth tried to intercept her by the way, but she
arrived safely and was warmly welcomed. She was nineteen, beautiful,
gifted, rarely accomplished, had been trained in the most brilliant and
gayest capital in Europe, and was a fervent Catholic. She came back to
a land which had by Act of Parliament prohibited the Mass and adopted a
religious faith she considered heretical, and a land where
Protestantism in its austerest form had become rooted, and where John
Knox, its sternest exponent, held the conscience of the people in his
keeping. What to her were only simple pleasures, were to them deadly
sins. When the Mass was celebrated after her return, so intense was
the excitement, the chapel-door had to be guarded, and Knox proclaimed
from the pulpit, that "an army of 10,000 enemies would have been less
fearful to him" than this act of the Queen.

During the winter in Edinburgh the gayeties gave fresh offence. Knox
declared that "the Queen had danced excessively till after midnight."
And then he preached a sermon {287} on the "Vices of Princes," which
was an open attack upon her uncles, the Guises in France. Mary sent
for the preacher, and reproved him for disrespect in trying to make her
an object of contempt and hatred to her people, adding, "I know that my
uncles and ye are not of one religion, and therefore I do not blame
you, albeit you have no good opinion of them." The General Assembly
passed resolutions recommending that it be enacted by Parliament that
"all papistical idolatry should be suppressed in the realm, not alone
among the subjects, but in the Queen's own person." Mary, with her
accustomed tact, replied, that she "was not yet persuaded in the
Protestant religion, nor of the impiety in the Mass. But although she
would not leave the religion wherein she had been nourished and brought
up, neither would she press the conscience of any, and, on their part,
they should not press her conscience."

We cannot wonder that Mary was revolted by the harshness of John Knox;
nor can we wonder that he was alarmed. A fascinating queen, with a
rare talent for diplomacy, and in personal touch with all the Catholic
centres in Europe, was a {288} formidable menace to the Reformed Church
in Scotland, and