although the punishment itself was merited and agreeable to law, cannot be pleaded as precedents in ordinary cases. But even when we cannot approve of his reasonings, we are compelled to admire the openness with which he avowed, and the boldness with which he defended, sentiments so opposite to those which were generally received in that age. In the month of August, Knox went, by appointment of the General Assembly, as visitor of the {130} churches, to Aberdeen and other parts of the north, where he remained six or seven weeks.[134] At the subsequent meeting of Assembly, he received a similar appointment to Fife and Perthshire.[135] Our Reformer’s predictions at the last meeting of parliament were now fully realized. Another parliament was held in the end of 1564, but nothing was done for securing the protestant religion.[136] The queen’s marriage had long engaged the anxious attention of her ministers, and had been the subject of much negotiation with England and at foreign courts; but the various proposals which had been made with a view to it, and the political intrigues to which they gave rise, were all thwarted by the sudden and strong passion which Mary conceived for Henry, lord Darnley, the son of the earl of Lennox. As this young nobleman, so far as he had discovered any religious sentiments, was inclined to popery,[137] the match could not be very agreeable to the great body of the nation, who had already testified the strongest jealousy at the queen’s attachment to that religion. It was, therefore, natural for the nobility, in the prospect of this event, to provide additional securities {131} for the protestant church, and to insist that the royal sanction, hitherto withheld, should now be granted to its legal establishment. Upon this condition, they promised their consent to the marriage.[138] The queen agreed to summon a parliament to settle this important affair, but she found some pretext for proroguing its meeting;[139] and, having gained a number of the nobility by favours and promises, she proceeded, in July 1565, not only to solemnize the nuptials, but to proclaim her husband king, without the consent of the estates of the kingdom.