cause but farder pley;[89] and yet, praise be to God, I may whisper in sic manner as I will be hard sufficientlie in the largest house in all Carrick.”――“The larger the house, the better for the auditor and me,” replied the Reformer. The earl of Cassilis wrote to Knox, expressing his disapprobation of the proposed dispute, as unlikely to do any good, and calculated to endanger the public peace; to which the Reformer replied, by signifying, that his relation had given the challenge, which he was resolved not to decline, and that his lordship ought to encourage him to keep the appointment, from which no bad effects were to be dreaded. Upon this the abbot wrote a letter to Knox, charging him with having procured Cassilis’s letter, to bring him into disgrace, and to advance his own honour; and saying, that he would have “rancountered” him the last time he was in that country, had it not been for the interposition of his nephew. “Ye sal be assured,” {66} adds he, “I sal keip day and place in Mayboill, according to my writing, an I haif my life, and my feit louse;” and in another letter to Knox and the bailies of Ayr, he says, “keip your promes, and pretex na joukrie, by my lorde of Cassilis writing.”――“To nether of these,” says Knox, “did I answer otherwise than by appointing the day, and promising to keap the same. For I can pacientlie suffer wantone men to speak wantonlie, considering that I had sufficientlie answered my lord of Cassilis in that behalf.” The conditions of the combat were now speedily settled. They agreed to meet on the 28th of September, at eight o’clock in the morning, in the house of the provost of Maybole. Forty persons on each side were to be admitted as witnesses of the dispute, with “as many mo as the house might goodly hold, at the sight of my lord of Cassilis.” And notaries, or scribes, were chosen on each side to record the papers which might be given in by the parties, and the arguments which they advanced in the course of reasoning, to prevent unnecessary repetition, or a false report of the proceedings. These conditions were formally drawn out, and subscribed by the Abbot and the Reformer, on the day preceding the meeting.