Knox, however, believed, or chose to say, that she wanted to cut all Protestant throats, just as he believed that a Protestant king should cut all Catholic throats.  He attributed to her, quite erroneously and uncharitably, his own unsparing fervour.  As he held this view of her character and purposes, it is not strange that a journey to Scotland was “contrairious to his judgement.”

He did not understand the situation.  Ferocious as had been the English invasion of Scotland in 1547, the English party in Scotland, many of them paid traitors, did not resent these “rebukes of a friend,” so much as both the nobles and the people now began to detest their French allies, and were jealous of the Queen Mother’s promotion of Frenchmen.

There were not, to be sure, many Scots whom she, or any one, could trust.  Some were honestly Protestant:  some held pensions from England:  others would sacrifice national interests to their personal revenges and clan feuds.  The Rev. the Lord James Stewart, Mary’s bastard brother, Prior of St. Andrews and of Pittenweem, was still very young.  He had no interest in his clerical profession beyond drawing his revenues as prior of two abbeys; and his nearness to the Crown caused him to be suspected of ambition:  moreover, he tended towards the new ideas in religion.  He had met Knox in London, apparently in 1552.  Morton was a mere wavering youth; Argyll was very old:  Chatelherault was a rival of the Regent, a competitor for the Crown and quite incompetent.  The Regent, in short, could scarcely have discovered a Scottish adviser worthy of employment, and when she did trust one, he was the brilliant “chamaeleon,” young Maitland of Lethington, who would rather betray his master cleverly than run a straight course, and did betray the Regent.  Thus Mary, a Frenchwoman and a Catholic, governing Scotland for her Catholic daughter, the Dauphiness, with the aid of a few French troops who had just saved the independence of the country, naturally employed French advisers.  This made her unpopular; her attempts to bring justice into Scottish courts were odious, and she would not increase the odium by persecuting the Protestants.  The Duke’s bastard brother, again, the Archbishop, sharing his family ambition, was in no mood for burning heretics.  The Queen Mother herself carried conciliation so far as to pardon and reinstate such trebly dyed traitors as the notorious Crichton of Brunston, and she employed Kirkcaldy of Grange, who intrigued against her while in her employment.  An Edinburgh tailor, Harlaw, who seems to have been a deacon in English orders, was allowed to return to Scotland in 1554.  He became a very notable preacher. {62a}