and advancing against them with an army, obliged them to take refuge in England.[148] While her marriage with Darnley was in dependence, and she laboured to surmount the opposition made to it by the nobility, Mary had condescended to court the protestant ministers. Having sent for the superintendents of Lothian, Glasgow, and Fife, (for Knox could not now be admitted to her presence,) she amused them with fair words. She was not yet persuaded, she said, of the truth of their religion, but was willing to hear conference and reasoning on the subject; she was also content to attend the public sermons of some of them; and, “above all others, she would gladly hear the superintendent of Angus, for he was a mild and sweet‑natured man, with true honesty and uprightness, Sir John Erskine of Dun.”[149] {134} She even went so far as to be present at a sermon preached by one of the ministers in Callendar‑house, at the baptism of a child of lord Livingston.[150] But as soon as her marriage was accomplished, she told the commissioners of the church, in very plain and determined language, “her majesty neither will, nor may, leave the religion wherein she has been nourished and brought up.”[151] And there was no further proposal of attending either sermon or conference. The friendship between the earl of Murray and the Reformer had been renewed in the beginning of 1565. Knox was placed in a very delicate predicament by the insurrection under Murray, and the other lords who opposed the queen’s marriage. His father‑in‑law was one of their number. They professed that the security of the protestant religion was the principal ground of their taking arms; and they came to Edinburgh to collect men to their standard. But whatever favour he might have for them, he kept himself clear from any engagement.[152] If he had taken part in this unsuccessful revolt, we need not doubt that her majesty would have embraced the opportunity of punishing him for it, when his principal friends had fled the kingdom.