a previous decision of his own, as we shall see. When the rest of the party were discussing the question, Makgill, Clerk Register, reminded them of their previous debate in November 1561, when {240} Knox, after secretly writing to Calvin, had proposed to write to him for his opinion about the Queen's Mass, and Lethington had promised to do so himself. But Lethington now said that, on later reflection, as Secretary of the Queen, he had scrupled, without her consent, to ask a foreigner whether her subjects might prevent her from enjoying the rites of her own religion--for that was what the "controversies" between her Highness and her subjects really and confessedly meant. {241a} Knox was now requested to consult Calvin, "and the learned in other Kirks, to know their judgment in that question." The question, judging from Makgill's interpellation, was "whether subjects might lawfully take her Mass from the Queen." {241b} As we know, Knox had already put the question to Calvin by a letter of October 24, 1561, and so had the anonymous writer of November 18, 1561, whom I identify with Arran. Knox now refused to write to "Mr. Calvin, and the learned of other Kirks," saying (I must quote him textually, or be accused of misrepresentation), "I myself am not only fully resolved in conscience, but also I have heard the judgments in this, and all other things that I have affirmed in this Realm, of the most godly and most learned that be known in Europe. I come not to this Realm without their resolution; and for my assurance I have the handwritings of many; and therefore if I should move the same question again, what else should I do but either show my own ignorance and forgetfulness, or else inconstancy?" {241c} He therefore said that his opponents might themselves "write and complain upon him," and so learn "the plain minds" of the learned--but nobody took the trouble. Knox's defence was worded with the skill of a notary. He said that he had "heard the judgments" of "the learned and godly"; he did not say what these judgments were. Calvin, Morel, Bullinger, and such men, we know, entirely differed from his extreme ideas. He "came not without their resolution," or approval, to Scotland, but that was not the question at issue.