KNOX 133
Queen Mary, having failed to influence the Reformer by her "many salt tears" or her flattery, endeavoured to get him into her power by moving the privy council to pronounce him guilty of treason on the ground that he had written a circular letter to leading Protestants in reference to the trial of two persons indicted for a riot in the Chapel Royal. Knox's trial took place at a special meeting of council in December 1562, at which the queen was present and acted an unseemly part as prosecutrix. To the unconcealed chagrin and intense displeasure of his sovereign, Knox was by a majority of the noblemen present absolved from all blame and commended for his judicious defence.
Before he was required to appear a second time at a privy council meeting, Knox, who had been a widower for three years, was married to his second wife Margaret Stewart, daughter of "the good" Lord Ochiltree; and in Ochiltree House, an ancient baronial residence, the room is still pointed out where, in March 1564, the marriage was celebrated. The occasion of his second appearance before the privy council was the preaching of a sermon in St Giles's about a month after the marriage of Queen Mary and Lord Darnley in July 1565. On the day the sermon was preached the young king made an imposing appearance, sitting on a throne prepared for his reception. Enraged by what he regarded as passages having a reference to himself in the discourse of the preacher, Darnley returned to the palace with the determination not to taste food till the offender had been punished. Knox was accordingly called before the council, "from my bed," as he tells us. Informed that he had offended the king, and that he must desist from preaching so long as their majesties remained in Edinburgh, Knox made reply that he had spoken nothing but according to his text (Isa. xxvi. 13-21), and, if the church should command him either to speak or abstain, he would obey, so far as the word of God would permit him. In regard to the sermon he deemed it necessary for his own exoneration to write out in full what he had spoken, and publish it with a preface dated at Edingbrough, the 19th of September 1565." This sermon is the only specimen of Knox's pulpit discourses handed down to us. Dr M'Crie is of opinion that the prohibition was of a very temporary nature; but it does not appear that Knox resumed his usual ministrations in Edinburgh, unless at occasional intervals, till after Mary had been deprived of her authority in 1567. During this period of absence from his charge, however, the inhibited preacher was far from idle. In 1566 he drew up the most considerable portion of his Historie of the Reformation, having made a commencement in 1559 or 1560, and he wrote at the request of the Assembly various public letters. He also visited churches in the south of Scotland, and made a journey to England, in order to see his two sons, who had been there for education since the death of their mother Marjory Bowes.
On the 29th July 1567 the infant James VI. was crowned in the parish church of Stirling, and on that occasion Knox reappeared in public and preached the coronation sermon. He also preached at the opening of parliament in December of the same year, when the Confession of Faith formed and approved by parliament in 1560, with various Acts in favour of the Reformed religion, was solemnly ratified. When James Stuart, earl of Murray and regent of Scotland, was assassinated and died at Linlithgow, 23d January 1569, the event caused anguish and anxiety to the Reformer, who poured out the sorrows of his heart in the sermon and the prayers of the day on which the tidings reached the capital, and who thereafter preached the funeral sermon in the presence of three thousand persons gathered to witness the interment in the south aisle of the collegiate church of St Giles. The strain to which body and mind alike had been subjected for many years back, and the shock caused by the removal of the nobleman in whom he placed the greatest confidence, affected the Reformer's health, and in the month of October 1570 he had a stroke of apoplexy. Although he so far rallied as to have the use of speech restored to him and to resume preaching, he never entirely recovered from the debility which the stroke produced.
Resolved to take no prominent part in public affairs, and confining himself to preaching in the forenoon of the Lord's day, Knox might have spent what little of life on earth remained for him in the house assigned him by the provost and town council of Edinburgh, had he not become personally obnoxious to Kirkcaldy of Grange. This and the troubles which agitated the country induced Knox, "sore against his will, being compellit be the Brethren of the Kirk and Town," to quit the metropolis and retire to St Andrews. During his stay there of fifteen months the many infirmities of age did not prevent him engaging in his two favourite employments of preaching and writing. How he preached James Melville, then a student, afterwards minister of Anstruther, has described in an often-quoted passage of his "Diary." The latest publication of Knox in his life time was "imprentit at Sanctandrois be Robert Lekpreuik, Anno Do. 1572." It is a tract in the form of an answer to a letter written by James Tyrie, a Scottish Jesuit.
By the end of July the adherents of the queen's party abandoned Edinburgh, and so enabled the banished citizens to return to their homes. One of their first acts was to send for Knox, who, travelling slowly because of weakness, reached the capital (for the last time) on the 23d August 1572. Only two more public appearances were to be made by him. The first of these was when in September tidings came to Edinburgh of the St Bartholomew massacre. Being assisted to reach the pulpit, and summoning up the remainder of his strength, he thundered out the vengeance of heaven against "that cruel murderer and false traitor, the king of France," and desired the French ambassador to tell his master that sentence was pronounced against him in Scotland, that the Divine vengeance would never depart from him nor from his house if repentance did not ensue, but that his name would remain an execration to posterity, and none proceeding from his loins should enjoy his kingdom in peace. The other occasion on which the debilitated Reformer appeared in public was the induction of Lawson, sub-principal of King's College, Aberdeen, as his successor, which took place on the 9th November. After taking a leading and solemn part in the services, he crept down the street leaning upon his staff and the arm of his attendant, and entered his house never to leave it alive.
Interesting details of his last illness and death-bed exercises are furnished in two contemporary narratives – Richard Bannatyne's "Account of Knox's Last Illness and Death" given in his Journal of the Transactions in Scotland 1570-1573, and the "Eximii viri Joannis Knoxii Scoticanæ Ecclesiæ instauratoris vera extremæ vitæ & obitus Historia" of Thomas Smeton, principal of the university of Glasgow, at the end of his Responsio ad Hamiltonii Dialogum, 1579. Both narratives are inserted by Dr Laing in his edition of the Works, vol. vi. part ii. Attended by his wife and friends, Knox died on Monday the 24th of November 1572, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. The funeral took place on the Wednesday following, when the body was brought from the house in the Netherbow Port by the newly-appointed regent, the earl of Morton, and other noblemen, and interred in the burying-ground connected with the church of St Giles. "When the body was laid in the grave," says Calderwood, "the earl of Morton uttered these words: – 'Here lieth a man, who in his life never feared the face of man; who hath
