Of his sons the eldest, William, was--setting Knox aside--the most extraordinary Scott of his time. Knox was essentially Scottish in the good and not so good of his character, and was essentially an extreme Calvinist of his period; "judged too extreme," he says, by his associates. Young Maitland of Lethington, on the other hand, might have been French or Italian, hardly English. He was an absolutely modern man. In religion, even before the revolution of 1559, he was in favour of the new ideas, but also in favour of compromise and, if possible, of peace. We first meet him i i private discussion with Knox,--pleading for compromise, but yielding, with a smile, or a sigh, to the amazingly confident fallacies of the Reformer. He serves the Queen Mother, Mary of Guise, a brave unhappy lady, as Secretary of State, till he sees that her cause is every way impossible, and goes over to the Reformers, and wins for them the alliance of England, and victory. He had a great ideal, and a lofty motive, a patriotic desire for honourable peace and alliance with England. On all occasions when he encountered Knox, he met him with the "educated insolence" of his wit, with the blandest _persiflage_; Knox writhed and reports his ironies, and--Knox, in the long run, {215}had the better of this smiling modern man, no fanatic, no believer in any preacher's infallibility. Maitland served Queen Mary loyally, while he might; when things went otherwise than he wished, was behind the scenes of the murder of Riccio; but was frankly forgiven as the husband of the dearest of the Four Maries, Mary Fleming, and as Indispensable. He and his brother John, later the able minister of James VI, were in the conspiracy to murder Darnley; that is the central mystery in his career, his part In that brutal, blundering needless crime. He was partner with the violent Bothwell, a brute of culture, who hated, captured, bullied, and threatened him; for Maitland discountenanced, with remarkable and solitary courage, Bothwell's marriage. Escaping from Bothwell's grip, he fled to the nobles who had risen against Bothwell; he corrupted Mary's commander in Edinburgh Castle; when she was a captive, he is said, by the English agent, Randolph, to have urged that she should be slain,--for, as she said, "she had that in black and white which would hang Lethington." She escaped, and his policy was, in his own interests, to appear to prosecute her, and secretly to advise and aid her; to win, if not her forgiveness, an amnesty, if she returned to power, which he believed to be inevitable. She hated no man more bitterly, but she needed no man so much. As he had lost for her Edinburgh Castle, he gained it for her once more by winning to her cause the gallant Kirkcaldy of Grange, commanding therein for her enemies. He lived, a disease-stricken man. through the siege of the castle, meeting Knox once or twice with the old insolent smooth-spoken disdain of the prophet. He