ith a sore-troubled heart, because he that
ought to consider matters with a deep judgment is become not only a
despiser, but also a taunter of God's messengers--God be merciful unto
him! Amongst others his most unpleasing words, while that I was about to
have declared my heart in the whole matter, he said, 'Away with your
rhetorical reasons! for I will not be persuaded with them.' God knows I
did use no rhetoric nor coloured speech; but would have spoken the
truth, and that in most simple manner. I am not a good orator in my own
cause; but what he would not be content to hear of me, God shall declare
to him one day to his displeasure, unless he repent."[97] Poor Knox, you
see, is quite commoved. It has been a very unpleasant interview. And as
it is the only sample that we have of how things went with him during
his courtship, we may infer that the period was not as agreeable for
Knox as it has been for some others.

However, when once they were married, I imagine he and Marjorie Bowes
hit it off together comfortably enough. The little we know of it may be
brought together in a very short space. She bore him two sons. He seems
to have kept her pretty busy, and depended on her to some degree in his
work; so that when she fell ill, his papers got at once into
disorder.[98] Certainly she sometimes wrote to his dictation; and, in
this capacity, he calls her "his left hand."[99] In June, 1559, at the
headiest moment of the Reformation in Scotland, he writes regretting the
absence of his helpful colleague, Goodman, "whose presence" (this is the
not very grammatical form of his lament) "whose presence I more thirst,
than she that is my own flesh."[100] And this, considering the source
and the circumstances, may be held as evidence of a very tender
sentiment. He tells us himself in his History, on the occasion of a
certain meeting at the Kirk of Field, that he was in no small heaviness
by reason of the late death of his "dear bedfellow, Marjorie
Bowes."[101] Calvin, condoling with him, speaks of her as "a wife whose
like is not to be found everywhere" (that is very like Calvin), and
again, as "the most delightful of wives." We know what Calvin thought
desirable in a wife, "good humour, chastity, thrift, patience, and
solicitude for her husband's health," and so we may suppose that the
first Mrs. Knox fell not far short of this ideal.

The actual date of the marriage is uncertain; but by the summer of 1554,
at the latest, the Re