Before this turn was given to matters, and at midnight between the 10th and 11th of June, the Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, the mother of the Queen of Scots, had passed away from the earth, and thus the stage was as it were cleared for the important things which were so soon to be achieved. The one Mary had gone to her account; the other had not yet come from France to take personal possession of the throne of her native land, and in the interval many things otherwise--humanly speaking at least--unattainable were obtained. "The stars in their courses" were fighting for the Reformation; the providence of God was on its side, and blind indeed must the historian be who sees no indication of that fact. But because we fully recognise His hand, it is the more important that we distinctly note also the obliquities which characterized the conduct of many of the human actors in these transactions; and it is with a {129} sense of something like mortification that we confess that even Knox did not stand the ordeal without deterioration. He was, as Laing remarks, "a chief instigator and agent" in the negotiations with England; and, for the most part, he manifested the strictest integrity. But there is one letter extant which prevents us from being able to say that he never lent his countenance to deceit. He is writing to Sir James Croft requesting that men should be sent by him to the help of the Reformers; and in answer to the objection that the league between England and France made it impossible to do that without offending France, he says,[3] "If ye list to craft with them, the sending of a thousand men to us can break no league nor point of peace contracted between you and France; for it is free for your subjects to serve in war any prince or nation for their wages; and if you fear that such excuses shall not prevail, you may declare them rebels to your realm, when ye shall be assured that they are in our company." We mention it that we may not be accused of concealing any portion of the truth concerning him. We do not extenuate it; we cannot vindicate it. We say only that it is, so far as we know, the solitary instance of the kind in the extensive correspondence of our Reformer; that it is a clear exception to the general outspoken, and in some cases even indiscreet, frankness by which he was characterized; and that, perhaps, he caught the infection from those with whom he was treating, for Froude says of Elizabeth at {130} this time, "It is certain only that on the one hand she was distinctly doing, what as distinctly she said she was not doing; and on the other, that she was holding out hopes which, if she could help it, she never meant to fulfil;"[4] and even Cecil, as the same author proves, was a master in the same kind of craft, so that his indignant reference to Knox's proposal reads to us now like an illustration of "Satan reproving sin." It was in truth, as Laing has said, "an age of