n
Mary, after a conversation with Knox, "that my subjects shall obey you
rather than me." "Madam," replied Knox, "my study is that both princes
and people shall obey God"--but, of course, the voice of the pulpit was
the voice of God. As a contemporary put it: "Knox is king; what he
wills obeyit is." Finally the kirk was a tyranny, as a democracy may
well be. In life, in manners, in thought, the citizen was obliged,
under severe social penalty, to conform exactly to a very narrow
standard.

[Sidenote: Queen Mary in Scotland, August 19, 1561]

When Queen Mary, a widow eighteen years old, landed in Scotland, she
must have been aware of the thorny path she was to tread. It is
impossible not to pity her, the spoiled darling of the gayest court of
Europe, exposed to the bleak skies and bleaker winds of doctrines at
Edinburgh. Endowed with high spirit, courage, no little cleverness and
much charm, she might have mastered the situation had her character or
discretion equaled her intellect and beauty. But, thwarted, nagged and
bullied by men whose religion she hated, whose power she feared and
whose low birth she despised, she became more and more reckless in the
pursuit of pleasure until she was tangled in a network of vice and
crime, and delivered helpless into the hands of her enemies.

{365} Her true policy, and the one which she began to follow, was
marked out for her by circumstances. Scotland was to her but the
stepping-stone to the throne of England. As Elizabeth's next heir she
might become queen either through the death of the reigning sovereign,
or as the head of a Catholic rebellion. At first she prudently decided
to wait for the natural course of events, selecting as her secretary of
state Maitland, "the Scottish Cecil," a staid politician bent on
keeping friends with England. But at last growing impatient, she
compromised herself in the Catholic plots and risings of the
disaffected southerners.

So, while aspiring to three crowns, Mary showed herself incapable of
keeping even the one she had. Not religion but her own crimes and
follies caused her downfall, but it was over religion that the first
clash with her subjects came. She would have liked to restore
Catholicism, though this was not her first object, for she would have
been content to be left in the private enjoyment of her own worship.
Even on this the stalwarts of the kirk looked askance. Knox preached
as Mary landed that one mass was mor