This is the only instance in which I have found our Reformer recommending dissimulation, which was very foreign to the openness of his natural temper, and the blunt and rigid honesty that marked his general conduct. His own opinion was, that the English court ought from the first to have done what they found themselves obliged to do at last――avow their resolution to support the Congregation. Keith praises Croft’s “just reprimand on Mr Knox’s double fac’d proposition,” and Cecil says, that his “audacite was well tamed.” We must not, however, imagine, that these statesmen had any scruple of conscience, or nice feeling of honour on this point. For, on the {293} very day on which Croft reprimanded Knox, he wrote to Cecil that he thought the queen ought openly to take part with the Congregation. And in the same letter in which Cecil speaks of Knox’s audacity, he advises Croft to adopt in substance the very measure which our Reformer had recommended, by sending five or six officers, who should “steal from thence with appearance of displeasure for lack of interteynment;” and in a subsequent letter, he gives directions to send three or four, fit for being captains, who should give out that they left Berwick, “as men desyrous to be exercised in the warres, rather than to lye idely in that towne.”[445] Notwithstanding the prejudice which existed in the English court against our Reformer,[446] on account of his “audacity” in attacking female prerogative, they were too well acquainted with his integrity and influence to decline his services. Cecil kept up a correspondence with him; and in the directions sent {294} from London for the management of the subsidy, it was expressly provided, that he should be one of the council for examining the receipts and payments, to see that it was applied to “the common action,” and not to any private use.[447] In the mean time, his zeal and activity, in the cause of the Congregation, exposed him to the deadly resentment of the queen regent and the papists. A reward was publicly offered to any one who should apprehend or kill him; and not a few, actuated by hatred or avarice, lay in wait to seize his person. But this did not deter him from appearing in public, nor from travelling through the country in the discharge of his duty. His exertions at this period were incredibly great. By day he was employed in preaching, by night in writing letters on public business. He was the soul of the Congregation; was always found at the post of danger; and by his presence, his public discourses, and private advices, animated the whole body, and defeated the schemes employed to corrupt or disunite them.[448]