In fact they obeyed Knox's epistle to England of January 1559. "Mingle- mangle ministry, Popish order, and Popish apparel," they will not bear. Knox's arguments in favour of their conforming, for the time at all events, are quoted and refuted: "And also concerning Paul his purifying at Jerusalem." The analogy of Paul's conformity had been rejected by Knox, at the supper party with Lethington in 1556. He had "doubted whether either James's commandment or Paul's obedience proceeded from the Holy Ghost." {262a} Yet now Knox had used the very same argument from Paul's conformity which, in 1556, he had scouted! The Mass was not in question in 1568; still, if Paul was wrong (and he did get into peril from a mob!), how could Knox now bid the English brethren follow his example? {262b} (See pp. 65-67 supra.) To be sure Mary was probably at large, when Knox wrote, with 4000 spears at her back. The Reformer may have rightly thought it an ill moment to irritate Elizabeth, or he may have grown milder than he was in 1559, and come into harmony with Bullinger. In February of the year of this correspondence he had written, "God comfort that dispersed little flock," apparently the Puritans of his old Genevan congregation, now in England, and in trouble, "amongst whom I would be content to end my days. . . . " {263a} In January 1570, Knox, "with his one foot in the grave," as he says, did not despair of seeing his desire upon his enemy. Moray was asking Elizabeth to hand over to him Queen Mary, giving hostages for the safety of her life. Moray sent his messenger to Cecil, on January 2, 1570, and Knox added a brief note. "If ye strike not at the root," he said, "the branches that appear to be broken will bud again. . . . More days than one would not suffice to express what I think." {263b} What he thought is obvious; "stone dead hath no fellow." But Mary's day of doom had not yet come; Moray was not to receive her as a prisoner, for the Regent was shot dead, in Linlithgow, on January 23, by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, to the unconcealed delight of his sister, for whom his death was opportune. The assassin, Bothwellhaugh, in May 1568, had been pardoned for his partisanship of Mary, at Knox's intercession. "Thy image, O Lord, did so clearly shine on that personage" (Moray)--he said in his public prayer at the Regent's funeral {263c}--"that the devil, and the people to whom he is Prince, could not abide it." We know too much of Moray to acquiesce, without reserve, in this eulogium.