When John Knox was on his death-bed in Edinburgh, November 1572, the situation of Kirkaldy and his friends in the castle had become critical. Mr David Lindsay, minister of Leith, came to visit the reformer, and asked how he did. ‘He answerit: “Weel, brother, I thank God; I have desired all this day to have you, that I may send you yet to yon man in the castle, whom ye ken I have loved sae dearly. Go, I pray you, tell him that I have sent you to him yet ance to warn and bid him, in the name of God, leave that evil cause, and give ower that castle: gif not, he shall be brought down ower the walls with shame, and hing against the sun: sae God has assured me.” Mr David, howbeit he thought the message hard, and the threatening over particular, yet obeyed, and passed to the castle; and meeting with Sir Robert Melville walking on the wall, tauld him, wha was, as he thought, meikle movit with the matter. Thereafter [he] communed with the captain, whom he thought also somewhat moved; but he passed from him into the Secretar Lethington, with whom, when he had conferred a while, he came out to Mr David again, and said to him: “Go, tell Mr Knox he is but ane ... prophet.” Mr David, returning, tauld Mr Knox he had discharged the commission faithfully, but that it was not weel accepted of after the captain had conferrit with the secretar. “Weel (says Mr Knox) I have been earnest with my God anent the twa men; for the ane [Kirkaldy] I am sorry that so should befall him; yet God assures me there is mercy for his saul: for that other [the Secretary Lethington], I have nae warrant that ever he shall be weel.”’ [Sidenote: 1573.] The castle surrendered, and Kirkaldy fell into the power of the Regent Morton. He offered all he possessed for his life. But the reformer’s prophecy was to be fulfilled, and how far it served to fulfil itself, we may surmise from what Morton wrote to the English agent. ‘Considering,’ he says, ‘what has been, and daily is, _spoken by the preachers, that God’s plague will not cease while the land be purged of blood_, and having regard that such as are interested by the death of their friends, the destruction of their houses, and away taking of their goods, could not be satisfied by any offer made to me in particular.... I deliberated to let justice proceed.’[87]