On Christmas day, 1552, {37a} he preached at Newcastle against Papists, as “thirsting nothing more than the King’s death, which their iniquity would procure.”  In two brief years Knox was himself publicly expressing his own thirst for the Queen’s death, and praying for a Jehu or a Phinehas, slayers of idolaters, such as Mary Tudor.  If any fanatic had taken this hint, and the life of Mary Tudor, Catholics would have said that Knox’s “iniquity procured” the murder, and they would have had fair excuse for the assertion.

Meanwhile charges were brought against the Reformer, on the ground of his Christmas sermon of peace and goodwill.  Northumberland (January 9, 1552- 53) sends to Cecil “a letter of poor Knox, by the which you may perceive what perplexity the poor soul remaineth in at this present.”  We have not Knox’s interesting letter, but Northumberland pled his cause against a charge of treason.  In fact, however, the Court highly approved of his sermon.  He was presently again in what he believed to be imminent danger of life:  “I fear that I be not yet ripe, nor able to glorify Christ by my faith,” he wrote to Mrs. Bowes, “but what lacketh now, God shall perform in His own time.” {37b} We do not know what peril threatened the Reformer now (probably in March 1553), but he frequently, later, seems to have doubted his own “ripeness” for martyrdom.  His reluctance to suffer did not prevent him from constant attendance to the tedious self-tormentings of Mrs. Bowes, and of “three honest poor women” in London.

Knox, at all events, was not so “perplexed” that he feared to speak his mind in the pulpit.  In Lent, 1553, preaching before the boy king, he denounced his ministers in trenchant historical parallels between them and Achitophel, Shebna, and Judas.  Later, young Mr. Mackail, applying the same method to the ministers of Charles ii., was hanged.  “What wonder is it then,” said Knox, “that a young and innocent king be deceived by crafty, covetous, wicked, and ungodly councillors?  I am greatly afraid that Achitophel be councillor, that Judas bear the purse, and that Shebna be scribe, comptroller, and treasurer.” {38a}

This appears the extreme of audacity.  Yet nothing worse came to Knox than questions, by the Council, as to his refusal of a benefice, and his declining, as he still did, to kneel at the Communion (April 14, 1553).  His answers prove that he was out of harmony with the fluctuating Anglicanism of the hour.  Northumberland could not then resent the audacities of pulpiteers, because the Protestants were the only party who might stand by him in his approaching effort to crown Lady Jane Grey.  Now all the King’s preachers, obviously by concerted action, “thundered” against Edward’s Council, in the Lent or Easter of 1553.  Manifestly, in the old Scots phrase, “the Kirk had a back”; had some secular support, namely that of their party, which Northumberland could not slight.  Meanwhile Knox was sent on a preaching tour in Buckinghamshire, and there he was when Edward vi. died, in the first week of July 1553. {38b}