The Lords, July 2, replied to the proclamation of Mary of Guise, saying that she accused them of a purpose “to invade her person.” {139a} There is not a word of the kind in the Regent’s proclamation as given by Knox himself.  They denied what the Regent in her proclamation had not asserted, and what she had asserted about their dealings with England they did not venture to deny; “whereby,” says Spottiswoode in his “History,” “it seemed there was some dealing that way for expelling the Frenchmen, which they would not deny, and thought not convenient as then openly to profess.” {139b} The task of giving the lie to the Regent when she spoke truth was left to the pen of Knox.

Meanwhile, at Dunbar, Mary of Guise was in evil case.  She had sounded Erskine, the commander of the Castle, who, she hoped, would stand by her.  But she had no money to pay her French troops, who were becoming mutinous, and d’Oysel “knew not to what Saint to vow himself.”  The Earl of Huntly, before he would serve the Crown, {139c} insisted on a promise of the Earldom of Moray; this desire was to be his ruin.  Huntly was a double dealer; “the gay Gordons” were ever brave, loyal, and bewildered by their chiefs.  By July 22, the Scots heard of the fatal wound of Henri II., to their encouragement.  Both parties were in lack of money, and the forces of the Congregation were slipping home by hundreds.  Mary, according to Knox, was exciting the Duke against Argyll and Lord James, by the charge that Lord James was aiming at the crown, in which if he succeeded, he would deprive not only her daughter of the sovereignty, but the Hamiltons of the succession.  Young and ambitious as Lord James then was, and heavily as he was suspected, even in England, it is most improbable that he ever thought of being king.

The Congregation refused to let Argyll and Lord James hold conference with the Regent.  Other discussions led to no result, except waste of time, to the Regent’s advantage; and, on July 22, Mary, in council with Lord Erskine, Huntly, and the Duke, resolved to march against the Reformers at Edinburgh, who had no time to call in their scattered levies in the West, Angus, and Fife.  Logan of Restalrig, lately an ally of the godly, surrendered Leith, over which he was the superior, to d’Oysel; and the Congregation decided to accept a truce (July 23-24).

At this point Knox’s narrative becomes so embroiled that it reminds one of nothing so much as of Claude Nau’s attempts to glide past an awkward point in the history of his employer, Mary Stuart.  I have puzzled over Knox’s narrative again and again, and hope that I have disentangled the knotted and slippery thread.

It is not wonderful that the brethren made terms, for the “Historie” states that their force numbered but 1500 men, whereas d’Oysel and the Duke led twice that number, horse and foot.  They also heard from Erskine, in the Castle, that, if they did not accept “such appointment as they might have,” he “would declare himself their enemy,” as he had promised the Regent.  It seems that she did not want war, for d’Oysel’s French alone should have been able to rout the depleted ranks of the Congregation.