To ourselves it does seem that for a preacher to call levies out of every town and province, to meet in the capital on a day when a trial was to be held, is a thing that no Government can tolerate.  The administration of justice is impossible in the circumstances.  But it was the usual course in Scotland, and any member of the Privy Council might, at any time, find it desirable to call a similar convocation of his allies.  Mary herself, fretted by the perfidies of Elizabeth, had just been consoled by that symbolic jewel, a diamond shaped like a rock, and by promises in which she fondly trusted when she at last sought an asylum in England, and found a prison.  For two months she had often been in deep melancholy, weeping for no known cause, and she was afflicted by the “pain in her side” which ever haunted her (December 13-21). {233b}

Accused by the Master of Maxwell of unbecoming conduct, Knox said that such things had been done before, and he had the warrant “of God, speaking plainly in his Word.”  The Master (later Lord Herries), not taking this view of the case, was never friendly with Knox again; the Reformer added this comment as late as December 1571. {233c}

Lethington and Moray, like Maxwell, remonstrated vainly with our Reformer.  Randolph (December 21) reports that the Lords assembled “to take order with Knox and his faction, who intended by a mutinous assembly made by his letter before, to have rescued two of their brethren from course of law. . . . " {234a} Knox was accompanied to Holyrood by a force of brethren who crowded “the inner close and all the stairs, even to the chamber door where the Queen and Council sat.” {234b} Probably these “slashing communicants” had their effect on the minds of the councillors.  Not till after Riccio’s murder was Mary permitted to have a strong guard.

According to Knox, Mary laughed a horse laugh when he entered, saying, “Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear himself.  I will see gif I can gar him greit.”  Her Scots, textually reported, was certainly idiomatic.

Knox acknowledged his letter to the Congregation, and Lethington suggested that he might apologise.  Ruthven said that Knox made convocation of people daily to hear him preach; what harm was there in his letter merely calling people to convocation.  This was characteristic pettifogging.  Knox said that he convened the people to meet on the day of trial according to the order “that the brethren has appointed . . . at the commandment of the general Kirk of the Realm.”

Mary seems, strangely enough, to have thought that this was a valid reply.  Perhaps it was, and the Kirk’s action in that sense, directed against the State, finally enabled Cromwell to conquer the Kirk-ridden country.  Mary appears to have admitted the Kirk’s imperium in imperio, for she diverted the discussion from the momentous point really at issue—­the right of the Kirk to call up an armed multitude to thwart justice.  She now fell on Knox’s employment of the word “cruelty.”  He instantly started on a harangue about “pestilent Papists,” when the Queen once more introduced a personal question; he had caused her to weep, and he recounted all their interview after he attacked her marriage from the pulpit.