During the regency of Murray everything went well, but his assassination (what terrible times these were!) at Linlithgow, by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, on the 23rd of January, 1569, was a terrible blow to Knox. Indeed, it may be said that he was never quite the same man afterwards. Knox and Murray loved and trusted each other thoroughly--perhaps all the more from the additional insight into each other's hearts {185} which their temporary estrangement gave them, and when the Regent was stricken down the Reformer felt as if his chief human helper had been taken from him. Murray was a genuine patriot, and in the main a sincere and noble man. He had his faults, and on exceptional occasions like that described by Froude,[1] when he was made the tool of Elizabeth, he was constrained to be, at least by his silence, a party to deceit which in his heart he abhorred; but that historian has not hesitated to call him "a noble gentleman of stainless honour,"[2] and to affirm that "his noble nature had no taint of self in it";[3] and though Robertson has done his best to belittle him, the verdict of history we think will settle in the acceptance of Spottiswood's eulogy: "a man truly good, and worthy to be ranked among the best governors that this kingdom hath enjoyed, and therefore to this day honoured with the title of 'the good Regent.'" On the Sunday after this irreparable loss, Knox poured out his heart to God before the congregation in a prayer which showed how deeply the bereavement had depressed his spirit, and on the day of the funeral he preached a sermon from the text, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord," in which he sketched the character and career of his friend with such effect that three thousand persons were moved to tears by his words. The blow fell sorely on the country; and it nearly crushed the {186} Reformer. The loss preyed upon his spirit and enfeebled his strength, so that in the month of October following he was stricken with paralysis or apoplexy, which laid him aside altogether for a season from his work, and gave warning of the approaching end. His enemies exulted over his illness, and could not refrain from congratulating themselves on the prospect that he would never preach again; but after some weeks he so far regained his vigour as to resume, in part at least, those labours in which he had found so much of his joy. Throughout the winter and the spring he continued to bear testimony from his pulpit to the principles which he had so long proclaimed, and to expose and rebuke the evil-doers who were once more at work in the land. For though the murder of Murray brought no permanent advantage to the party of reaction, it brought back again, for a while at least, the chaos and contentions out of which he had begun to bring order and peace. Lennox, as the grandfather of the infant king, was put into the place of Murray, but within a comparatively brief period he was