took the chair between those
two rows of troubled counsellors, Lethington at one side, Maxwell at the
other. She gave an angry laugh as she took her place. "Wat ye[4] whereat
I laugh?" she said (or is reported to have said) to one of these
intimate supporters. "Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear
himself: I will see if I can gar him greit."

[4] It would be curious to know what language Mary spoke when she is
reported to have made these very characteristic utterances. It is one of
the points in the discussion about the famous Casket letters that she
could not write Scots. Did she make love and make war, and hold courts
and councils of this grave description, in French or in a broken version
of her native tongue? No one ever says so, and it is surely a thing that
could not be passed without remark.

The proceedings being opened, Knox's letter was read. It was not a
conciliatory letter, being in reality a call if not to arms yet to that
intervention of an army of resolute men which had overawed the
authorities again and again in earlier times. It contained the usual
vehement statements about that crime of saying mass which, or even to
permit it, was the most desperate of public offences in Knox's eyes: and
there is little doubt that it exaggerated the danger of the crisis, and
contained at least one misleading statement as to matters of which there
was no proof. When it was read a moment of silence ensued, and then
Lethington spoke:--

"Maister Knox, are ye not sorry from your heart, and do ye not
repent that sic ane letter has passed your pen, and from you is come
to the knowledge of others?"

John Knox answered, "My Lord Secretaire, before I repent I must be
taught my offence."

"Offence!" said Lethington; "if there were no more but the
convocation of the Queen's lieges the offence cannot be denied."

"Remember yourself, my lord," said the other, "there is a difference
between ane lawful convocation and ane unlawful. If I have been
guilty in this, I have often offended since I came last in Scotland;
for what convocation of the brethren has ever been to this day with
which my pen served not? Before this no man laid it to my charge as
a crime."

"Then was then," said Lethington, "and now is now. We have no need
of such convocations as sometime we have had."

John Knox answered, "The time that has been is even now before my
eyes; for I se