STATESMEN AND SAGES as to alienate the most powerful noble in the country, and the one whom he respected most Lord James Stuart, afterward the Regent Moray. The marriage of Mary with Darnley (1565), again, however, led them to common counsels, as both saw in this marriage the most serious menace against the new religion. In the subsequent revolt, headed by Moray and the other Protestant nobles, Knox nevertheless took no part, and remained at his charge in Edinburgh. But after the murder of Rizzio, he deemed it wise, considering Mary's disposi- tion toward him, to withdraw to Kyle, in Ayrshire, where he appears to have written the greater part of his history. The events of the next two years the murder of Darnley, Mary's marriage with Bothwell, and her subsequent flight into England again threw the manage- ment of affairs into the hands of the Protestant party; and under Moray as regent the acts of 1 560, in favor of the reformed religion, were duly ratified by the estates of the realm. As in the former revolution, Knox was still the same for- midable force the nobles had to reckon with : and at Stirling, at the coronation of James VI. (1567), he preached in that strain which gave his sermons the character and importance of public manifestoes. The assassination of Moray, in 1570, and the consequent formation of a strong party in favor of Mary, once more endangered the cause to which he had devoted his life, and the pos- session of the castle of Edinburgh by the queen's supporters forced him to re- move to St. Andrews for safety. He had already had a stroke of apoplexy, and he was now but the wreck of his former self, but his spirit was as indomitable as ever. The description of him at this period, by James Melville, can never be omitted in any account of Knox. " Being in St. Andrews, he was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go hulie and fear with a furring of martricks about his neck, a staff in the one hand, and good, godly Richart Ballanden, his ser- vant, holding up the other, oxter from the abbey to the parish church ; and be the said Richart and another servant lifted up to the pulpit where he behooved to loan, at his first entry, but or he had done with his sermon, he was so active and vigorous that he was like to ding that pulpit in blads, and fly out of it." It was the desire of his congregation of St. Giles to hear him once more before he died. Accordingly, by short stages, he made his way to Edinburgh, and on November 9, 1572, at the induction of his successor in office, he made his last public appearance. He died the same month, at the age of sixty-seven, and was buried in the churchyard then attached to St. Giles, behind which church a small square stone in the pavement of Parliament Square, marked " J. K., 1572," now indicates the spot where he is supposed to lie. The saying of Regent Mor- ton at his grave, " Here lieth a man who in his life never feared the face of man" (Calderwood), was the most memorable panegyric that could have been pronounced to his memory. Knox was twice married. His first wife, Marjory Bowes, died in 1560, leav- ing him two sons. By his second wife, Margaret Stewart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree, whom (little more than a girl) he married in 1564, he had three ^ daughters. His widow and all his family survived him.
