Even before this secret treaty was drafted, on March 10, 1557, Glencairn, Lorne, Erskine, and the Prior of St. Andrews—­best known to us in after years as James Stewart, Earl of Moray—­informed Knox that no “cruelty” by way of persecution was being practised; that his presence was desired, and that they were ready to jeopard their lives and goods for the cause.  The rest would be told to Knox by the bearer of the letter.  Knox received the letter in May 1557, with verbal reports by the bearers, but was so far from hasty that he did not leave Geneva till the end of September, and did not reach Dieppe on his way to Scotland till October 24.  Three days later he wrote to the nobles who had summoned him seven months earlier.  He had received, he said, at Dieppe two private letters of a discouraging sort; one correspondent said that the enterprise was to be reconsidered, the other that the boldness and constancy required “for such an enterprise” were lacking among the nobles.  Meanwhile Knox had spent his time, or some of it, in asking the most godly and the most learned of Europe, including Calvin, for opinions of such an adventure, for the assurance of his own conscience and the consciences of the Lord James, Erskine, Lorne, and the rest. {76a} This indicates that Knox himself was not quite sure of the lawfulness of an armed rising, and perhaps explains his long delay.  Knox assures us that Calvin and other godly ministers insisted on his going to Scotland.  But it is quite certain that of an armed rising Calvin absolutely disapproved.  On April 16, 1561, writing to Coligny, Calvin says that he was consulted several months before the tumult of Amboise (March 1560) and absolutely discouraged the appeal to arms.  “Better that we all perish a hundred times than that the name of Christianity and the Gospel should come under such disgrace.” {76b} If Calvin bade Knox go to Scotland, he must have supposed that no rebellion was intended.  Knox tells his correspondents that they have betrayed themselves and their posterity ("in conscience I can except none that bear the name of nobility"), they have made him and their own enterprise ridiculous, and they have put him to great trouble.  What is he to say when he returns to Geneva, and is asked why he did not carry out his purpose?  He then encourages them to be resolute.

Knox “certainly made the most,” says Professor Hume Brown, “of the two letters from correspondents unknown to us.”  He at once represented them as the cause of his failure to keep tryst; but, in April 1558, writing from Geneva to “the sisters,” he said, “the cause of my stop to this day I do not clearly understand.”  He did not know why he left England before the Marian persecutions; and he did not know why he had not crossed over to Scotland in 1557.  “It may be that God justly permitted Sathan to put in my mind such cogitations as these:  I heard such troubles as appeared in that realm;”—­troubles presently to be described.