But when Knox was gone, he had the stage to himself, and began to develop his views, apparently seeking to use Buchanan as a tool for carrying them into execution. James Melville, in his entertaining diary, tells us that when Andrew his uncle returned from abroad, Morton sent Buchanan to him to try whether the influence of an old master over an old pupil and lifelong friend could not prevail on Andrew to assist him in more or less Anglicising the ‘Kirk.’ The idea of getting Andrew Melville to assent to Episcopacy and Erastianism, or any modification of them, was of course utterly futile and ludicrous. You might as well have tried to marry fire and water. To Buchanan himself the proposal would not appear unreasonable in itself. He was not an ecclesiastic, but a scholar and thinker to whom the struggle between Presbyterian and Prelate would appear a sectarian squabble, but his interview with his severely Puritanical pupil undoubtedly convinced him that Morton’s scheme for turning the Scottish into a branch of the Anglican church would simply defeat itself. It would rend and desolate the ecclesiastical life of Scotland--as was too amply proved by the Scottish history of the seventeenth century,--and paralyse it for the time as a power in resisting the efforts of the avowed or tacit Catholic League to crush that element of liberty in the Protestant revolt, which to Buchanan was its most valuable characteristic. This, and not ‘the said horse,’ was unquestionably the explanation of Buchanan’s growing antagonism to Morton. If ‘the said horse’ was not a myth, it might, taken in conjunction with the abortive Melville negotiation, lead Buchanan to think that Morton was just a little too much disposed to convert his friends into useful instruments for his own purposes--an impression which would be greatly deepened when he noticed Morton’s great and increasing anxiety to get the young King, Buchanan’s special charge, into his power, Buchanan’s opposition to which project, for which Melville (Sir James) expressly vouches, contributed ultimately to Morton’s downfall.