To be sure Mary was probably at large, when Knox wrote, with 4000 spears at her back.  The Reformer may have rightly thought it an ill moment to irritate Elizabeth, or he may have grown milder than he was in 1559, and come into harmony with Bullinger.  In February of the year of this correspondence he had written, “God comfort that dispersed little flock,” apparently the Puritans of his old Genevan congregation, now in England, and in trouble, “amongst whom I would be content to end my days. . . . " {263a}

In January 1570, Knox, “with his one foot in the grave,” as he says, did not despair of seeing his desire upon his enemy.  Moray was asking Elizabeth to hand over to him Queen Mary, giving hostages for the safety of her life.  Moray sent his messenger to Cecil, on January 2, 1570, and Knox added a brief note.  “If ye strike not at the root,” he said, “the branches that appear to be broken will bud again. . . .  More days than one would not suffice to express what I think.” {263b} What he thought is obvious; “stone dead hath no fellow.”  But Mary’s day of doom had not yet come; Moray was not to receive her as a prisoner, for the Regent was shot dead, in Linlithgow, on January 23, by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, to the unconcealed delight of his sister, for whom his death was opportune.

The assassin, Bothwellhaugh, in May 1568, had been pardoned for his partisanship of Mary, at Knox’s intercession.  “Thy image, O Lord, did so clearly shine on that personage” (Moray)—­he said in his public prayer at the Regent’s funeral {263c}—­“that the devil, and the people to whom he is Prince, could not abide it.”  We know too much of Moray to acquiesce, without reserve, in this eulogium.

Knox was sorely disturbed, at this time, by the publication of a jeu d’esprit, in which the author professed to have been hidden in a bed, in the cabinet of a room, while the late Regent held a council of his friends. {264a} The tone and manner of Lindsay, Wood, Knox and others were admirably imitated; in their various ways, and with appropriate arguments, some of them urged Moray to take the crown for his life.  By no people but the Scots, perhaps, could this jape have been taken seriously, but, with a gravity that would have delighted Charles Lamb, Knox denounced the skit from the pulpit as a fabrication by the Father of Lies.  The author, the human penman, he said (according to Calderwood), was fated to die friendless in a strange land.  The galling shaft came out of the Lethington quiver; it may have been composed by several of the family, but Thomas Maitland, who later died in Italy, was regarded as the author, {264b} perhaps because he did die alone in a strange country.

At this time the Castle of Edinburgh was held in the Queen’s interest by Kirkcaldy of Grange, who seems to have been won over by the guile of Lethington.  That politician needed a shelter from the danger of the Lennox feud, and the charge of having been guilty of Darnley’s murder.  To take the place was beyond the power of the Protestant party, and it did not fall under the guns of their English allies during the life of the Reformer.