ry, whom Elizabeth was about to hand
over to Mar for instant execution. Knox died on November 24, 1572; Mar,
the Regent, had predeceased him by a month, leaving Morton in power. On
May 28, 1573, the castle, attacked by guns and engineers from England,
and cut off from water, struck its flag. The brave Kirkcaldy was hanged;
Lethington, who had long been moribund, escaped by an opportune death.
The best soldier in Scotland and the most modern of her wits thus
perished together. Concerning Knox, the opinions of his contemporaries
differed. By his own account the leaders of his party deemed him "too
extreme," and David Hume finds his ferocious delight in chronicling the
murders of his foes "rather amusing," though sad! Quarrels of religion
apart, Knox was a very good-hearted man; but where religion was
concerned, his temper was remote from the Christian. He was a perfect
agitator; he knew no tolerance, he spared no violence of language, and in
diplomacy, when he diplomatised, he was no more scrupulous than another.
Admirably vigorous and personal as literature, his History needs constant
correction from documents. While to his secretary, Bannatyne, Knox
seemed "a man of God, the light of Scotland, the mirror of godliness";
many silent, douce folk among whom he laboured probably agreed in the
allegation quoted by a diarist of the day, that Knox "had, as was
alleged, the most part of the blame of all the sorrows of Scotland since
the slaughter of the late Cardinal."

In these years of violence, of "the Douglas wars" as they were called,
two new tendencies may be observed. In January 1572, Morton induced an
assembly of preachers at Leith to accept one of his clan, John Douglas,
as Archbishop of St Andrews: other bishops were appointed, called
_Tulchan_ bishops, from the _tulchan_ or effigy of a calf employed to
induce cows to yield their milk. The Church revenues were drawn through
these unapostolic prelates, and came into the hands of the State, or at
least of Morton. With these bishops, superintendents co-existed, but not
for long. "The horns of the mitre" already began to peer above
Presbyterian parity, and Morton is said to have remarked that there would
never be peace in Scotland till some preachers were hanged. In fact,
there never was peace between Kirk and State till a deplorable number of
preachers were hanged by the Governments of Charles II. and James II.

A meeting of preachers in Edinburgh, after the