In writing against Anabaptists (1558-59), Knox wanted to make them, not merciful Calvinists, the objects of the fear and revenge of Catholic rulers.  He even hazarded one of his unfulfilled prophecies:  Anabaptists, wicked men, will execute those divine judgments for which Protestants of his species are too tender-hearted; though, somehow, they make exceptions in the cases of Beaton and Riccio, and ought to do so in the case of Mary Stuart!

Lethington did not use this passage of our Reformer’s works against him, though it was published in 1560.  Probably the secretary had not worked his way through the long essay on Predestination.  But we have, in the book against the Anabaptists and in the controversy with Lethington, an example of Knox’s fatal intellectual faults.  As an individual man, he would not have hurt a fly.  As a prophet, he deliberately tried to restore, by a pestilent anachronism, in a Christian age and country, the ferocities attributed to ancient Israel.  This he did not even do consistently, and when he is inconsistent with his prevailing mood, his biographers applaud his “moderation”!  If he saw a chance against an Anabaptist, or if he wanted to conciliate Mary of Guise, he took up a Christian line, backing it by texts appropriate to the occasion.

His influence lasted, and the massacre of Dunavertie (1647), and the slaying of women in cold blood, months after the battle of Philiphaugh, and the “rouping” of covenanted “ravens” for the blood of cavaliers taken under quarter, are the direct result of Knox’s intellectual error, of his appeals to Jehu, Phinehas, and so forth.

At this point the Fourth Book of Knox’s “History” ends with a remark on the total estrangement between himself and Moray.  The Reformer continued to revise and interpolate his work, up to 1571, the year before his death, and made collections of materials, and notes for the continuation.  An uncertain hand has put these together in Book V. But we now miss the frequent references to “John Knox,” and his doings, which must have been vigorous during the troubles of 1565, after the arrival in Scotland of Darnley (February 1565), and his courtship and marriage of the Queen.  These events brought together Moray, Chatelherault, and many of the Lords in the armed party of the Congregation.  They rebelled; they were driven by Mary into England, by October 1565, and Bothwell came at her call from France.  The Queen had new advisers—­Riccio, Balfour, Bothwell, the eldest son of the late Huntly, and Lennox, till the wretched Darnley in a few weeks proved his incapacity.  Lethington, rather neglected, hung about the Court, as he remained with Mary of Guise long after he had intended to desert her.

Mary, whose only chance lay in outstaying Elizabeth in the policy of celibacy, had been driven, or led, by her rival Queen into a marriage which would have been the best possible, had Darnley been a man of character and a Protestant.  He was the typical “young fool,” indolent, incapable, fierce, cowardly, and profligate.  His religion was dubious.  After his arrival (on February 26, 1565) he went with Moray to hear Knox preach, but he had been bred by a Catholic mother, and, on occasion, posed as an ardent Catholic. {246} It is unfortunate that Randolph is silent about Knox during all the period of the broils which preceded and followed Mary’s marriage.