Doubtless Knox, with his unparalleled activity, employed the period of delay in preaching the Word at Dieppe. After his arrival in Scotland, he wrote to his Dieppe congregation, upbraiding them for their Laodicean laxity in permitting idolatry to co-exist with true religion in their town. Why did they not drive out the idolatrous worship? These epistles were intercepted by the Governor of Dieppe, and their contents appear to have escaped the notice of the Reformer's biographers. A revolt followed in Dieppe. {108b} Meanwhile Knox's doings at Dieppe had greatly exasperated Francois Morel, the chief pastor of the Genevan congregation in Paris, and president of the first Protestant Synod held in that town. The affairs of the French Protestants were in a most precarious condition; persecution broke into fury early in June 1559. A week earlier, Morel wrote to Calvin, "Knox was for some time in Dieppe, waiting on a wind for Scotland." "He dared publicly to profess the worst and most infamous of doctrines: 'Women are unworthy to reign; Christians may protect themselves by arms against tyrants!'" The latter excellent doctrine was not then accepted by the Genevan learned. "I fear that Knox may fill Scotland with his madness. He is said to have a boon companion at Geneva, whom we hear that the people of Dieppe have called to be their minister. If he be infected with such opinions, for Christ's sake pray that he be not sent; or if he has already departed, warn the Dieppe people to beware of him." {109a} A French ex-capuchin, Jacques Trouille, was appointed as Knox's successor at Dieppe. {109b} Knox's ideas, even the idea that Christians may bear the sword against tyrants, were all his own, were anti-Genevan; and though Calvin (1559-60) knew all about the conspiracy of Amboise to kill the Guises, he ever maintained that he had discouraged and preached against it. We must, therefore, credit Knox with originality, both in his ideas and in his way of giving it to be understood that they had the approval of the learned of Switzerland. The reverse was true. By May 3, Knox was in Edinburgh, "come in the brunt of the battle," as the preachers' summons to trial was for May 10. He was at once outlawed, "blown loud to the horn," but was not dismayed. On this occasion the battle would be a fair fight, the gentry, under their Band, stood by the preachers, and, given a chance in open field with the arm of the flesh to back him, Knox's courage was tenacious and indomitable. It was only for lonely martyrdom that he never thought himself ready, and few historians have a right to throw the first stone at him for his backwardness.