Knox meanwhile, much puzzled by the news from the north, was in the western counties. He induced the lairds of Ayrshire to sign a Protestant band, and he had a controversy with the Abbot of Crosraguel. In misapplication of texts the abbot was even more eccentric than Knox, though he only followed St. Jerome. In his "History" Knox "cannot certainly say whether there was any secret paction and confederacy between the Queen herself and Huntly." {222c} Knox decides that though Mary executed John Gordon and other rebels, yet "it was the destruction of others that she sought," namely, of her brother, whom she hated "for his godliness and upright plainness." {222d} His upright simplicity had won him an earldom and the destruction of his rival! He and Lethington may have exaggerated Huntly's iniquities in council with Mary, but the rumours reported against her by Knox could only be inspired by the credulity of extreme ill-will. He flattered himself that he kept the Hamiltons quiet, and, at a supper with Randolph in November, made Chatelherault promise to be a good subject in civil matters, and a good Protestant in religion. Knox says that preaching was done with even unusual vehemence in winter, when his sermon against the Queen's dancing for joy over some unknown Protestant misfortune was actually delivered, and the good seed fell on ground not wholly barren. The Queen's French and Scots musicians would not play or sing at the Queen's Christmas-day Mass, whether pricked in heart by conscience, or afraid for their lives. "Her poor soul is so troubled for the preservation of her silly Mass that she knoweth not where to turn for defence of it," says Randolph. {223a} These persecutions may have gone far to embitter the character of the victim. Mr. Froude is certainly not an advocate of Mary Stuart, rather he is conspicuously the reverse. But he remarks that when she determined to marry Darnley, "divide Scotland," and trust to her Catholic party, she did so because she was "weary of the mask which she had so long worn, and unable to endure any longer these wild insults to her creed and herself." {223b} She had, in fact, given the policy of submission to "wild insults" rather more than a fair chance; she had, for a spirited girl, been almost incredibly long-suffering, when "barbarously baited," as Charles I. described his own treatment by the preachers and the Covenanters. CHAPTER XVI: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued): 1563-1564