On October 24 the Congregation summoned Leith, having deposed the Regent in the name of the King and Queen, Francis and Mary, and of themselves as Privy Council!  They did more.  They caused one James Cocky, a gold worker, to forge the great seal of Francis and Mary, “wherewith they sealed their pretended laws and ordinances, tending to constrain the subjects of the kingdom to rebel and favour their usurpations.”  Their proclamations with the forged seal they issued at St. Andrews, Glasgow, Linlithgow, Perth, and elsewhere; using this seal in their letters to noblemen, who were ordered to obey Arran.  The gold worker, whose name is variously spelled in the French record, says that the device for the coins which the Congregation meant to issue and ordered him to execute was on one side a cross with a crown of thorns, on the other the words VERBUM DEI.  The artist, Cocky, was dilatory, and when the brethren were driven out of Edinburgh he gave the dies, unfinished, to John Achison, the chief official of the Mint, who often executed coins of Queen Mary. {158a} As Professor Hume Brown says of the audacious statement of the brethren, that they acted in the name of their King and Queen, their use of the forged Royal seal, “as covering their action with an appearance of law, served its purpose in their appeals to the people.”  Cocky and Kirkcaldy were hanged by Morton in 1573.

The idea of forging the great seal may have arisen in the fertile brain of Lethington, who about October 25 had at last deserted the Regent, and now took Knox’s place as secretary of the Congregation.  Henceforth their manifestoes say little about religion, and a great deal about the French design to conquer Scotland. {158b}

To the wit of Lethington we may plausibly attribute a proposal which, on October 25, Knox submitted to Croft. {159} It was that England should lend 1000 men for the attack on the Regent in Leith.  Peace with France need not be broken, for the men may come as private adventurers, and England may denounce them as rebels.  Croft declined this proposal as dishonourable, and as too clearly a breach of treaty.  Knox replied that he had communicated Croft’s letter “to such as partly induced me before to write” (October 29).  Very probably Lethington suggested the idea, leaving the burden of its proposal on Knox.  Dr. M’Crie says that it is a solitary case of the Reformer’s recommending dissimulation; but the proceeding was in keeping with Knox’s previous statements about the nature of the terms made in July; with the protestations of loyalty; with the lie given to Mary of Guise when she spoke, on the whole, the plain truth; and generally with the entire conduct of the prophet and of the Congregation.  Dr. M’Crie justly remarks that Knox “found it difficult to preserve integrity and Christian simplicity amidst the crooked wiles of political intrigue.”