riod, to be rebels was to be self-condemned. In the eyes of Calvin and
the learned of the Genevan Church, kings were the Lord's appointed, and
the Gospel must not be supported by the sword. "Better that we all
perish a hundred times," Calvin wrote to Coligny in 1561. Protestants,
therefore, if they would resist in arms, had to put themselves in order,
and though Knox had no doubt that to exterminate idolaters was thoroughly
in order, the leaders of his party were obliged to pay deference to
European opinion.

By a singular coincidence they adopted precisely the same device as the
more militant French Protestants laid before Calvin in August 1559-March
1560. The Scots and the Protestant French represented that they were
illegally repressed by foreigners: in Scotland by Mary of Guise with her
French troops; in France by the Cardinal and Duc de Guise, foreigners,
who had possession of the persons and authority of the "native prince" of
Scotland, Mary, and the "native prince" of France, Francis II., both
being minors. The French idea was that, if they secured the aid of a
native Protestant prince (Conde), they were in order, as against the
foreign Guises, and might kill these tyrants, seize the King, and call an
assembly of the Estates. Calvin was consulted by the chief of the
conspiracy, La Renaudie; he disapproved; the legality lent by one native
prince was insufficient; the details of the plot were "puerile," and
Calvin waited to see how the country would take it. The plot failed, at
Amboise, in March 1560.

In Scotland, as in France, devices about a prince of the native blood
suggested themselves. The Regent, being of the house of Guise, was a
foreigner, like her brothers in France. The "native princes" were
Chatelherault and his eldest son, Arran. The leaders, soon after Lord
James and Argyll formally joined the zealous brethren, saw that without
foreign aid their enterprise was desperate. Their levies must break up
and go home to work; the Regent's nucleus of French troops could not be
ousted from the sea fortress of Dunbar, and would in all probability be
joined by the army promised by Henri II. His death, the Huguenot
risings, the consequent impotence of the Guises to aid the Regent, could
not be foreseen. Scotland, it seemed, would be reduced to a French
province; the religion would be overthrown.

There was thus no hope, except in aid from England. But by the recent
treaty of Cateau Cambresis (Apri