To make assurance doubly sure, Cecil desired Randolph, the English resident in Scotland, to feel the pulse of the nobility. On the 9th of August 1561, only a few days before Mary sailed from France, Randolph wrote from Edinburgh an epistle to Cecil, in which he assures him that it will be a "stout adventure for a _sick crazed woman_," (a singular mode of designating Mary), to venture home to a country so little disposed to receive her. "I have shewn your Honour's letters," he says, "unto the Lord James, Lord Morton, Lord Lethington; _they wish, as your Honour doth, that she might be stayed yet for a space; and if it were not for their obedience sake, some of them care not tho' they never saw her face_."--And again--"Whatsomever cometh of this, he (Lethington), findeth it ever best that she come not." Knox also, it seems, had been written to, and had expressed his resolution to resist to the last Mary's authority. "By such letters as ye have last received," says Randolph, "your Honour somewhat understandeth of Mr Knox himself, and also of others, what is determined,--he himself to abide the uttermost, and others never to leave him, until God hath taken his life."--"His daily prayer is, for the maintenance of unity with England, and that God will never suffer men to be so ungrate as by any persuasion to run headlong unto the destruction of them that have saved their lives, and restored their country to liberty."[37] Elizabeth having thus felt her way, and being satisfied that she might with safety pursue her own inclinations, was determined not to rest contented with the mere refusal of passports. Throckmorton was ordered to ascertain exactly when and how Mary intended sailing. The Scottish Queen became aware of his drift, from some questions he put to her, and said to him cuttingly,--"I trust the wind will be so favourable, as I shall not need to come on the coast of England; and if I do, then M. l'Ambassadeur, the Queen, your mistress, shall have me in her hands to do her will of me; and if she be so hard-hearted as to desire my end, she may then do her pleasure, and make sacrifice of me. Peradventure, that casualty might be better for me than to live." Throckmorton, however, made good his point, and was able to inform Elizabeth that Mary would sail either from Havre-de-Grace or Calais, and that she would first proceed along the coast of Flanders, and then strike over to Scotland. For the greater certainty, he suggested the propriety of some spies being sent across to the French coast, who would give the earliest intelligence of her movements. Profiting by this and other information, all the best historians of the time agree in stating, that Elizabeth sent a squadron to sea with all expedition. It was only a thick and unexpected fog which prevented these vessels from falling in with that in which Mary sailed. The smaller craft which carried her furniture, they did meet with, and, believing them to be