ieved spirit had obliged Knox to withdraw. The assassination of the
Good Regent (as the Earl of Moray was deservedly surnamed) was
unquestionably the most disgraceful of all the murders perpetrated in
Scotland in the interests of faction during those years of confusion and
strife.[221] It brought no permanent advantage to the party of reaction.
It wrought much woe to the country, which under his firm yet kindly rule
had begun to settle into order and to recover its prosperity.

[Sidenote: He leaves Edinburgh.]

This great national calamity preyed on the spirit and broke the already
waning strength of Knox. In the month of October in that year[222] he
had a stroke of paralysis or of apoplexy, which for a time laid him
aside altogether from work, and permanently enfeebled his constitution.
As in the case of Wycliffe in the fourteenth century, his opponents
exulted over his misfortune, and circulated maliciously exaggerated
accounts of his condition, on which probably their more malicious and
notoriously fictitious accounts of his last illness were founded. But
this first seizure was not so severe as to put a final arrest on his
activities. Before many weeks were over he had so far recovered as to be
able, in part at least, to resume his labours. He was able in a measure
to continue them through the anxious and unquiet months of the
succeeding winter and spring--bearing faithful testimony to the
principles, religious and political, which he had long professed;
standing up resolutely in defence of the authority of the young prince,
when many, who had formerly sworn allegiance to him, led by the
intriguing laird of Lethington and the "fause" house of Hamilton, went
over to the party of his popish mother. He exposed their sophistries,
and fearlessly rebuked their defection, even after they had gained for
the time the supremacy in Edinburgh. Others might truckle to them or
quail before them, but that palsied old man, with all his former
plainness and much of his former fire, persevered in denouncing their
treachery and discrediting their proposals. Threatenings were uttered
against his life if he persisted in his course; protection seems to have
been refused him by the party against the violence of their lawless
followers; and one evening (as had often happened to Calvin in his years
of conflict) a musket-ball was fired in at the window of his house, and
lodged in the roof of the apartment in which he was sitting. Again and
a