subversion of good order. It has nevertheless pleased God to raise up,
as exceptions to this law, first Deborah, and afterward Elizabeth
Tudor--whose regiment we shall proceed to celebrate.

There is no evidence as to how the Reformer's explanations were
received, and indeed it is most probable that the letter was never shown
to Elizabeth at all. For it was sent under cover of another to Cecil,
and as it was not of a very courtly conception throughout, and was, of
all things, what would most excite the Queen's uneasy jealousy about her
title, it is like enough that the secretary exercised his discretion (he
had Knox's leave in this case, and did not always wait for that, it is
reputed) to put the letter harmlessly away beside other valueless or
unpresentable State Papers. I wonder very much if he did the same with
another,[78] written two years later, after Mary had come into Scotland,
in which Knox almost seeks to make Elizabeth an accomplice with him in
the matter of the "First Blast." The Queen of Scotland is going to have
that work refuted, he tells her; and "though it were but foolishness in
him to prescribe unto her Majesty what is to be done," he would yet
remind her that Mary is neither so much alarmed about her own security,
nor so generously interested in Elizabeth's, "that she would take such
pains, _unless her crafty counsel in so doing shot at a further mark_."
There is something really ingenious in this letter; it showed Knox in
the double capacity of the author of the "First Blast" and the faithful
friend of Elizabeth; and he combines them there so naturally, that one
would scarcely imagine the two to be incongruous.

Twenty days later he was defending his intemperate publication to
another queen--his own queen, Mary Stuart. This was on the first of
those three interviews which he has preserved for us with so much
dramatic vigour in the picturesque pages of his History. After he had
avowed the authorship in his usual haughty style, Mary asked: "You
think, then, that I have no just authority?" The question was evaded.
"Please your Majesty," he answered, "that learned men in all ages have
had their judgments free, and most commonly disagreeing from the common
judgment of the world; such also have they published by pen and tongue;
and yet notwithstanding they themselves have lived in the common society
with others, and have borne patiently with the errors and imperfections
which they could not amend." Thus