During the last illness of the young King Edward, Knox, as we have seen, received a commission to go upon a preaching tour in the county of Buckingham, where, like an old Hebrew prophet, he warned his hearers of the coming crisis. He was back in London, however, as we learn from the date of the first of his published letters, on the 23rd of June (1553); but before the death of his majesty, which happened on the 6th of July, he had returned to Buckinghamshire, and there, at Amersham, on the 16th of that month, he preached a sermon suited to the times in the very thick of the turmoil caused by the dispute as to the succession to the crown. The Duke of Northumberland had presumed to set the Lady Jane Dudley on the throne, but Mary Tudor's adherents could not brook such disloyalty to their mistress, and had already entered on that struggle which ended in the collapse of the reign of "the twelfth-day Queen." The county of Bucks, as Froude tells us, "both Catholic and Protestant," was "arming to the teeth." Sir Edward Hastings had called {65} out its musters, in Mary's name, and had been joined by Peckham, the cofferer of the royal household, who had gone off with the treasure under his charge, so that the Reformer was speaking "at the peril of his life among the troopers of Hastings." Nevertheless, nothing daunted, he thus apostrophised the land:[1] "O England! now is God's wrath kindled against thee. Now hath He begun to punish as He hath threatened a long while by His true prophets and messengers. He hath taken from thee the crown of thy glory, and hath left thee without honour as a body without a head. And this appeareth to be only the beginning of sorrows, which appeareth to increase. For I perceive that the heart, the tongue, and the hand of one Englishman is bent against another, and division to be in the whole realm, which is an assured sign of desolation to come. O England! England! dost thou not consider that thy commonwealth is like a ship sailing on the sea; if thy mariners and governors shall one consume another, shalt thou not suffer shipwreck in short process of time? O England! England! alas these plagues are poured upon thee, for that thou wouldest not know the most happy time of thy gentle visitation. But wilt thou yet obey the voice of thy God and submit thyself to His holy words? Truly if thou wilt, thou shalt find mercy in His sight, and the estate of thy commonwealth shall be preserved. But if thou obstinately wilt return into Egypt, that is, if thou contract marriage, confederacy, and league with such {66} princes as do maintain and advance idolatry (such as the Emperor, which is no less enemy unto Christ than ever was Nero); if for the pleasure and friendship (I say) of such princes them return to thine old abominations, before used under the papistry, then assuredly, O England, thou shall be plagued and brought to desolation by the means of those whose favour thou seekest, and by whom thou art procured to