This is quite explicit.  Knox, as envoy of the Lords, declares that in the treaty it is “appointed” that the French force shall leave Scotland on August 10. (The printed calendars are not accurate.) No such matter occurred in the treaty “wyth the quene.”  Knox added, next day, that he himself “was unfit to treat of so great matters,” and Croft appears to have agreed with him, for, by the Reformer’s lack of caution, his doings in Holy Island were “well known and published.”  Consequently, when Whitelaw returned to Knox with Cecil’s reply to the requests of the brethren, the performances of Knox and Whitelaw were no secrets, in outline at least, to the Regent’s party.  For this reason, Lord Seton, mistaking Whitelaw for Knox (who had set out on August 3 to join the brethren at Stirling), pursued and broke a chair on the harmless Brother Whitelaw.  Such was the Regent’s treacherous breach of treaty!

During this episode in his curious adventures as a diplomatist, Knox recommended Balnaves, author of a treatise on “Justification by Faith,” as a better agent in these courses, and with Balnaves the new envoy of Elizabeth, Sadleir, a veteran diplomatist (wheedled in 1543 by Mary of Guise), transacted business henceforth.  Sadleir was ordered to Berwick on August 6.  Elizabeth infringed the treaty of Cateau Cambresis, then only four months old, by giving Sadleir 3000 pounds in gold, or some such sum, for the brethren.  “They were tempting the Duke by all means possible,” {154a} but he will only promise neutrality if it comes to the push, and they, Argyll and Lord James say (Glasgow, August 13), are not yet ready “to discharge this authority,” that is, to depose the Regent.  Chatelherault’s promise was less vigorous than it had been reported!

Knox, who now acted as secretary for the Congregation, was not Sir Henry Wotton’s ideal ambassador, “an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country.”  When he stooped to statements which seem scarcely candid, to put it mildly, he did violence to his nature.  He forced himself to proclaim the loyalty of his party from the pulpit, when he could not do so without some economy of truth. {154b} He inserted things in his “History,” and spoke things to Croft, which he should have known to be false.  But he carried his point.  He did advance the “union of hearts” with England, if in a blundering fashion, and we owe him eternal gratitude for his interest in the match, though “we like not the manner of the wooing.”  The reluctant hand of Elizabeth was now inextricably caught in the gear of that great machine which broke the ancient league of France and Scotland, and saved Scotland from some of the sorrows of France.

The papers of Sadleir, Elizabeth’s secret agent with the Scots, show the godly pursuing their old plan of campaign.  To make treaty with the Regent; to predict from the pulpit that she would break it; to make false statements about the terms of the treaty; to accuse her of their infringement; to profess loyalty; to aim at setting up a new sovereign power; to tell the populace that Mary of Guise’s scanty French reinforcements—­some 1500 men—­came by virtue of a broken treaty; to tell Sadleir that they were very glad that the French had come, as they would excite popular hatred; to make out that the fortification of Leith was breach of treaty;—­such, in brief, were the methods of the Reformers. {155}