In Scotland, as in France, devices about a prince of the native blood suggested themselves.  The Regent, being of the house of Guise, was a foreigner, like her brothers in France.  The “native princes” were Chatelherault and his eldest son, Arran.  The leaders, soon after Lord James and Argyll formally joined the zealous brethren, saw that without foreign aid their enterprise was desperate.  Their levies must break up and go home to work; the Regent’s nucleus of French troops could not be ousted from the sea fortress of Dunbar, and would in all probability be joined by the army promised by Henri II.  His death, the Huguenot risings, the consequent impotence of the Guises to aid the Regent, could not be foreseen.  Scotland, it seemed, would be reduced to a French province; the religion would be overthrown.

There was thus no hope, except in aid from England.  But by the recent treaty of Cateau Cambresis (April 2, 1559), Elizabeth was bound not to help the rebels of the French Dauphin, the husband of the Queen of Scots.  Moreover, Elizabeth had no stronger passion than a hatred of rebels.  If she was to be persuaded to help the Reformers, they must produce some show of a legitimate “Authority” with whom she could treat.  This was as easy to find as it was to the Huguenots in the case of Conde.  Chatelherault and Arran, native princes, next heirs to the crown while Mary was childless, could be produced as legitimate “Authority.”  But to do this implied a change of “Authority,” an upsetting of “Authority,” which was plain rebellion in the opinion of the Genevan doctors.  Knox was thus obliged, in sermons and in the pamphlet (Book II. of his “History"), to maintain that nothing more than freedom of conscience and religion was contemplated, while, as a matter of fact, he was foremost in the intrigue for changing the “Authority,” and even for depriving Mary Stuart of “entrance and title” to her rights.  He therefore, in Book II. (much of which was written in August-October or September-October 1559, as an apologetic contemporary tract), conceals the actual facts of the case, and, while perpetually accusing the Regent of falsehood and perfidy, displays an extreme “economy of truth,” and cannot hide the pettifogging prevarications of his party.  His wiser plan would have been to cancel this Book, or much of it, when he set forth later to write a history of the Reformation.  His party being then triumphant, he could have afforded to tell most of the truth, as in great part he does in his Book III.  But he could not bring himself to throw over the narrative of his party pamphlet (Book II.), and it remains much as it was originally written, though new touches were added.

The point to be made in public and in the apologetic tract was that the Reformers contemplated no alteration of “Authority.”  This was untrue.