Moray, Ochiltree, Pitarro, and many others being now exiles in England, whose Queen had subsidised and repudiated them and their revolution, things went hard with the preachers.  For a whole year at least (December 1565-66) their stipends were not paid, the treasury being exhausted by military and other expenses, and Pitarro being absent.  At the end of December, Knox and his colleague, Craig, were ordered by the General Assembly to draw up and print a service for a general Fast, to endure from the last Sunday in February to the first in March, 1566.  One cause alleged is that the Queen’s conversion had been hoped for, but now she said that she would “maintain and defend” {248c} her own faith.  She had said no less to Knox at their first interview, but now she had really written, when invited to abolish her Mass, that her subjects may worship as they will, but that she will not desert her religion. {249a} It was also alleged that the godly were to be destroyed all over Europe, in accordance with decrees of the Council of Trent.  Moreover, vice, manslaughter, and oppression of the poor continued, prices of commodities rose, and work was scamped.  The date of the Fast was fixed, not to coincide with Lent, but because it preceded an intended meeting of Parliament, {249b} a Parliament interrupted by the murder of Riccio, and the capture of the Queen.  No games were to be played during the two Sundays of the Fast, which looks as if they were still permitted on other Sundays.  The appointed lessons were from Judges, Esther, Chronicles, Isaiah, and Esdras; the New Testament, apparently, supplied nothing appropriate.  It seldom did.  The lay attendants of the Assembly of Christmas Day which decreed the Fast, were Morton, Mar, Lindsay, Lethington, with some lairds.

The Protestants must have been alarmed, in February 1566, by a report, to which Randolph gave circulation, that Mary had joined a Catholic League, with the Pope, the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Duke of Savoy, and others.  Lethington may have believed this; at all events he saw no hope of pardon for Moray and his abettors—­“no certain way, unless we chop at the very root, you know where it lieth” (February 9). {249c} Probably he means the murder of Riccio, not of the Queen.  Bedford said that Mary had not yet signed the League. {249d} We are aware of no proof that there was any League to sign, and though Mary was begging money both from Spain and the Pope, she probably did not expect to procure more than tolerance for her own religion. {250a} The rumours, however, must have had their effect in causing apprehension.  Moreover, Darnley, from personal jealousy; Morton, from fear of losing the Seals; the Douglases, kinsmen of Morton and Darnley; and the friends of the exiled nobles, seeing that they were likely to be forfeited, conspired with Moray in England to be Darnley’s men, to slay Riccio, and to make the Queen subordinate to Darnley, and “to fortify and maintain” the Protestant faith.  Mary, indeed, had meant to reintroduce the Spiritual Estate into Parliament, as a means of assisting her Church; so she writes to Archbishop Beaton in Paris. {250b}