On the 29th of July, 1567, the Reformer preached the sermon at the coronation of James VI., in the parish church of Stirling.[185] He objected to the ceremony of unction, as a Jewish rite abused under the papacy; but it was deemed inexpedient, on the present occasion, to depart from the accustomed ceremonial. It was therefore performed by the bishop of Orkney; the superintendents of Lothian and Angus assisting him to place the crown on the king’s head.[186] After the coronation, Knox, along with some others, took instruments, and craved extracts of the proceedings.[187] When the queen was confined by the lords in {156} the castle of Lochleven, they had not resolved in what manner they should dispose of her person for the future. Some proposed that she should be allowed to leave the kingdom; some that she should be imprisoned during life; while others insisted that she ought to be capitally arraigned. Of this last opinion was Knox, with almost all the ministers, and the great body of the people. The chief ground upon which they insisted for this, was not her maladministration in the government, or the mere safety and peace of the commonwealth; which were the reasons upon which the parliament of England, in the following century, proceeded to the execution of her grandson. But they founded their opinion upon the personal crimes with which Mary was charged. Murder and adultery, they reasoned, were crimes to which the punishment of death was allotted by the law of God and of nations. From this penalty persons of no rank could plead exception. The ordinary forms of judicial procedure made no provision for the trial of a supreme magistrate, because the laws did not suppose that such enormous crimes could be committed by him; but extraordinary cases required extraordinary remedies, and new offences gave birth to new laws. There are examples in Scripture of the capital punishment of princes, nor are precedents of it wanting in the history of Scotland.[188] {157} Upon these grounds, Knox scrupled not publicly to maintain, that the estates of the kingdom ought to bring Mary to a trial; and, if she was found guilty of the murder of her husband, and an adulterous connexion with Bothwell, that she ought to be put to death. Throkmorton, the English ambassador, held a conference with him, with the view of mitigating the rigour of this judgment; but though he acquiesced in the resolution adopted by the nobility to detain her in prison, he retained his own sentiments, and, after the civil war was kindled by her escape from confinement, repeatedly said, that he considered the nation as suffering for their criminal lenity.[189]