So much for the Reformer's public work in Berwick; but before we accompany him to Newcastle, we must pause to mention that it was during his residence at this time in the border town that he made the acquaintance of and was engaged to the lady who afterwards became his wife. Her name was Marjory Bowes, and she was the daughter of Richard Bowes, youngest son of Sir Ralph Bowes, of Streatham. Her mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Aske, of Aske. The father, probably on account of Knox's religious opinions, was opposed to the marriage, and so the union was deferred for some years. But the mother was friendly to the Reformer, and with her he kept up a constant correspondence in which many of the softer traits of his character come beautifully out. Mrs. Bowes was subject to religious melancholy, and the tender manner in which he often seeks in his letters to bind up her bruised spirit shows that, when occasion needed, he could be a "son of consolation" as well as a "son of thunder." Sometimes too, as when his heart was stirred with solicitude for the spiritual interests of those among whom he had laboured, or when he was required to confront the possible issue of his uncompromising adherence to what he believed to be right, he rises to a strain of heroism which reminds us of the greatest of the apostles. One example of this occurs in his letter to his Berwick friends, and we may fitly {41} close this chapter by reproducing it here. "If any man be offended with me that I, willing to avoid God's wrath and vengeance threatened against such as having no necessity despise His ordinances, do purpose and intend to obey God, embracing such as He has offered unto me (rather) than to please and flatter man that unjustly held the same from me; if any, I say, for this cause be offended and will seek my displeasure or trouble, let the same understand, that as I have a body, which only they may hurt, and not unless God so permit; so have they bodies and souls which both shall God punish in fire inextinguishably with the devil and his angels, unless suddenly they repent and cease to malign against God and His holy ordinance. With life and death, dear brethren, I am at point,--they before me in equal balances. Transitory life is not so sweet to me that for defence thereof I will jeopard to lose the life everlasting. Nor yet is corporeal death to me so fearful that albeit most certainly I understood the same shortly to follow my godly purpose, I would therefore depone myself to die in God's wrath and anger for ever and ever, which no doubt I should do, if for man's pleasure I refused God's perfect ordinance."[8] There is no mistaking the ring of such words as these; and lie who wrote them takes his place in the honourable company of the heroes of conscience to whom the world no less than the Church has owed so much. [1] Lorimer, p. 17. [2] Lorimer, p. 18 [3] Lorimer, pp. 257-8. [4] Lorimer, p. 16. [5] Lorimer, p. 261.