assemblies, and
to the fervent preacher, devoured with eagerness to make them all, not
almost but altogether such men as himself, to call this an act of
policy. Yet that it was so, and that a bond was thus established to
consolidate the party, more sacred, more binding than any other, there
can be no reasonable doubt.

While travelling on this solemn mission from place to place and house to
house of the religious gentry of Scotland, Knox would seem to have made
Edinburgh his headquarters, and preached there from time to time, not
always secretly. He had here "a greater audience than ever before" in
"the Bishop of Dunkeld's great lodging," that ancient habitation from
which Gawin Douglas, the poet-bishop, had watched and waited while the
fight went on within the gates of the Nether Bow, and from which he
rushed out to rescue the other prelate whose corslet rang under his
rochet. Strange association, yet not inappropriate; for the mild Bishop
of Dunkeld had also found many potent words to say against the abuses of
the Church, though the new presbyter who now took his place was rather
of Beatoun's warlike mettle than of Douglas's. The nobles who came
thither to hear the preacher were so "weill contented" with his
doctrine--which is his own moderate version of what was no doubt an
enthusiasm of grave approbation--that they seem to have imagined, in
that solemn simplicity which belongs to fresh conviction, that he might
perchance, could she but hear him, move the Regent Queen herself, Mary
of Guise, an unlikely convert no doubt. He was accordingly exhorted by
three gentlemen, specified as the Earl of Glencairn, the Earl Marischal,
and Harye Drummond, to write a letter to the Queen, which Knox, always
eager for the pen, and full of matter boiling to have utterance,
immediately did. It is difficult not to think of the _sancta
simpilicitas_, which rarely belongs to such a group of men, when we
think of the grave trio of advisers, and the still graver but fiery
prophet-preacher, making this wonderful appeal. It was less wonderful in
him who loved nothing so much as to write when he could not be
preaching, to set forth those high-handed arraignments before the
visionary tribunal of the one true and only faith, of whomsoever he
could address, queen or peasant; but it is strange that men of the
world, and of the society of their time, should have thus thought it
possible to convert a lady so full of policy and cares of government,