This is the point that has perplexed me, for Knox, no less than the Congregation, seems to have deliberately said good-bye to truth and honour, unless the Lords elaborately deceived their secretary and diplomatic agent.  The only way in which I can suppose that Knox and his friends reconciled their consciences to their conduct is this: 

Knox tells us that “when all points were communed and agreed upon by mid-persons,” Chatelherault and Huntly had a private interview with Argyll, Glencairn, and others of his party.  They promised that they would be enemies to the Regent if she broke any one jot of the treaty.  “As much promised the duke that he would do, if in case that she would not remove her French at a reasonable day . . . " the duke being especially interested in their removal.  But Huntly is not said to have made this promise—­the removal of the French obviously not being part of the “Appointment.” {148a}

Next, the brethren, in arguing with the Catholics about their own mendacious proclamation of the terms, said that “we proclaimed nothing which was not finally agreed upon, in word and promise, betwixt us and those with whom the Appointment was made. . . . " {148b}

I can see no explanation of Knox’s conduct, except that he and his friends pacified their consciences by persuading themselves that non-official words of Huntly and Chatelherault (whatever these words may have been), spoken after “all was agreed upon,” cancelled the treaty with the Regent, became the real treaty, and were binding on the Regent!  Thus Knox or Kirkcaldy, or both, by letter; and Knox later, orally in conversation with Croft, could announce false terms of treaty.  So great, if I am right, is a good man’s power of self-persuasion!  I shall welcome any more creditable theory of the Reformer’s behaviour, but I can see no alternative, unless the Lords lied to Knox.

That the French should be driven out was a great point with Cecil, for he was always afraid that the Scots might slip back from the English to the old French alliance.  On July 28, after the treaty of July 24, but before he heard of it, he insisted on the necessity of expelling the French, in a letter to the Reformers. {149a} He “marvels that they omit such an opportunity to help themselves.”  He sent a letter of vague generalities in answer to their petitions for aid.  When he received, as he did, a copy of the terms of the treaty of July 24, in French, he would understand.

As further proof that Cecil was told what Knox and Kirkcaldy should have known to be untrue, we note that on August 28 the Regent, weary of the perpetual charges of perfidy anew brought against her, “ashamed not,” writes Knox, to put forth a proclamation, in which she asserted that nothing, in the terms of July 23-24, forbade her to bring in more French troops, “as may clearly appear by inspection of the said Appointment, which the bearer has presently to show.” {149b}