Many of the nobility who had aided in the establishment of the Reformation, gained over either by the fascination of Mary’s beauty and manners, or by the still more cogent appeal of personal interest, were far from seconding Knox’s efforts, or partaking in his apprehensions. The Earl of Murray was so far won over to adopt a temporising and conciliatory policy, that a quarrel ensued in 1563 between him and Knox, which lasted for two years, until quenched, as Knox expresses it, by the water of affliction. Maitland of Lethington, once an active Reformer, a man of powerful and versatile talents, who was now made Secretary of State, openly espoused the Queen’s wishes. In the summer of 1563, Knox was involved in a charge of high treason, for having addressed a circular to the chief Protestant gentlemen, requesting them to attend the trial of two persons accused of having created a riot at the Queen’s chapel. It appears that he held an especial commission from the General Assembly to summon such meetings, when occasion seemed to him to require them. Upon this charge of treasonably convoking the lieges, he was brought before the privy council. Murray and Maitland were earnest to persuade him into submission and acknowledgment of error. Knox, however, with his usual firmness and uprightness, refused positively to confess a fault when he was conscious of none, and defended himself with so much power, that by the voice of a majority of the council he was declared free of all blame. In March, 1564, more than three years after the death of his first wife, Knox was again married to a daughter of Lord Ochiltree, a zealous Protestant. Throughout that year and the following, he continued to preach as usual. Meanwhile, the Protestant establishment, though confirmed by the parliament, remained still unrecognised by the Queen, whose hasty marriage to Lord Henry Darnley in July, 1565, increased the alarm with which her conduct had already inspired the Reformers. But early in the following year, when Mary, in conjunction with her uncles of the House of Lorrain, had planned the formal re-establishment of Catholicism, her dissensions with her husband led to the assassination of Rizzio, and in rapid succession to the murder of Darnley, her marriage with Bothwell, and the train of events which ended in her formal deposition and the coronation of her infant son James VI. It is denied that Knox was privy to the assassination of Rizzio, and the tenor of his actions warrants us in disbelieving that he would have been an accomplice in any deed of blood; but after that event, he spoke of it in terms of satisfaction, indiscreet, liable to perversion, and unbecoming a Christian preacher. The Queen’s resentment for this and other reasons became so warm against him, that it was judged proper for him to retire from Edinburgh. He preached at the coronation of James VI. After Mary was made prisoner and confined at Lochleven, he, in common with most of