[Illustration:  JOHN KNOX’S HOUSE, EDINBURGH.  “We also passed the ancient and picturesque mansion in the High Street ... in which that distinguished reformer died.”]

Mary had been away in France for about thirteen years, and during that time she had for her companions four young ladies of the same name as her own and of about the same age, Mary Fleming, Mary Bethune, Mary Livingstone, and Mary Seaton, all of whom formed part of her retinue on her return to Scotland, where they were known as the “Queen’s Marys.”

[Illustration:  GROTESQUE HEADS ON TRINITY COLLEGE CHURCH.]

She was a staunch adherent of the Romish Church, a fact which accounted for many of her trials and mortifications.  Mainly owing to the powerful preaching of John Knox, many of the people of Scotland, both of high and low degree, had become fierce opponents of that form of religion, which they considered idolatrous.  The first Sunday after her arrival was St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24th, and preparations had been made to celebrate mass in the Chapel Royal, at which the Queen was to be present.  But no sooner was this known, than a mob rushed towards the edifice, exclaiming:  “Shall the idol be again erected in the land?” and shouting, “The idolatrous priests shall die the death!” On September 2nd the Queen made her public entry into Edinburgh, and on the same day John Knox had an audience with Mary, who, hearing of a furious sermon he had preached against the Mass on the previous Sunday in St. Giles’s Church, thought that a personal interview would mitigate his sternness.  The Queen took him to task for his book entitled The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women, and his intolerance towards every one who differed from him in opinion, and further requested him to obey the precepts of the Scriptures, a copy of which she perceived in his possession, and urged him to use more meekness in his sermons.  Knox in reply, it was said, “knocked so hastily upon her heart,” that he made her weep with tears of anguish and indignation, and she said, “My subjects, it would appear, must obey you, and not me; I must be subject to them, and not they to me!” Knox left Holyrood that day convinced that Mary’s soul was lost for ever, and that she despised and mocked all exhortation against the Mass.

When Mary attended her first Parliament, accompanied by her ladies, the Duke of Chatelherault carrying the Crown, the Earl of Argyll the Sceptre, and the Earl of Moray the Sword, she appeared so graceful and beautiful that the people who saw her were quite captivated, and many exclaimed, “God save that sweet face!”

During this short Parliament Knox preached in St. Giles’s Church, and argued that they ought to demand from the Queen “that which by God’s Word they may justly require, and if she would not agree with them in God, they were not bound to agree with her in the devil!” and concluded with some observations respecting the Queen’s rumoured marriage with Don Carlos of Spain, declaring, “Whenever ye consent that an infidel, and all Papists are infidels, shall be our head to our soverane, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banisch Christ Jesus from his realme; ye bring God’s vengeance upon this country, a plague upon yourselves, and perchance ye shall do no small discomfirt to your soverane.”