drew. He himself appears but on one occasion
after the marriage of Mary. Darnley, with perhaps an effort to hold the
balance even and propitiate the Church, attended the service at St.
Giles's, or, as the writer now calls it, the High Kirk of Edinburgh,
where Knox was preaching in his ordinary course unprepared for such an
honour. In the course of his sermon it chanced that he characterised as
one of the punishments with which God follows national sins, that boys
and women should rule over the nations. The young King (as he was
called) was passionately offended, and Knox was called next day to the
council to answer for himself, and at the same time forbidden to preach
for a stipulated time. He replied that he had spoken only according to
his text, and that if the Church commanded him to abstain from preaching
he would obey. This is all the formal record; but the following marginal
note is added which gives a faint but not altogether ineffective glimpse
of the Knox we know:--

"In answering he said more than he preached, for he added, that as
the King had, to pleasure the Queen, gone to mass and dishonoured
the Lord God, so should God in His justice make her an instrument of
his ruin; and so it fell out in a very short time; but the Queen
being incensed with these words fell out in tears, and to please her
John Knox must abstain from preaching for a time."

As a matter of fact this penalty meant nothing. Knox was enjoined to
silence as long only as the Queen and Darnley were in Edinburgh; and as
they took their departure that week, his work was scarcely interrupted
at all.

During several eventful years after this Knox remained in the shade,
separated from his friends, the enemy of the Court, and much denuded of
his national importance. It was at this period that he married for the
second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many
fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have
said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady,
Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to
bestow her youth upon the old preacher. So it was, however, whether
seemly or not. The lady must at least have known him well, for her
father had long been his faithful friend; and no doubt domestic comfort
and care were doubly necessary to a man whose labours were unending, and
who had never spared himself during his whole public life.