These words and this manner of speaking were judged intolerable. Papists and Protestants were both offended; yea, the most familiar friends of Knox disdained him for that utterance. Placeboes and flatterers posted to the Court to give information that he had spoken against the Queen's marriage, and the Provost of Lincluden, Douglas of Drumlanrig by surname, brought the charge that the said John Knox should present himself before the Queen. This he did soon after dinner. The Lord Ochiltree, and divers of the faithful, bare him company to the Abbey; but none passed in to the Queen with him in the cabinet but John Erskine of Dun, then Superintendent of Angus and Mearns. The Queen, in a vehement fume, began to cry out that never prince was handled as she was. _Queen._ I have borne with you in all your rigorous manner of speaking, both against myself and against my uncles; yea, I have sought your favours by all possible means. I offered unto you presence and audience whensoever it pleased you to admonish me; and yet I cannot be quit of you. I avow to God, I shall be once revenged. At these words, scarcely could Marna, her secret chamber boy, get napkins[213] to hold her eyes dry for the tears; and howling, besides womanly weeping, stayed her speech. The said John did patiently abide all the first fume, and at opportunity answered. [213] Pocket-handkerchiefs. _Knox._ True it is, Madam, your Grace and I have been at divers controversies, in which I never perceived your Grace to be offended at me. But, when it shall please God to deliver you from that bondage of darkness and error in which ye have been nourished for the lack of true doctrine, your Majesty will find in the liberty of my tongue nothing offensive. Outside the preaching place, Madam, I think few have occasion to be offended at me; and there, Madam, I am not master of myself, but must obey Him who commands me to speak plain, and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the earth. _Queen._ But what have ye to do with my marriage? _Knox._ If it please your Majesty to hear me patiently, I shall show the truth in plain words. I grant your Grace offered me more than ever I required; but my answer was then, as it is now, that God hath not sent me to wait upon the courts of princesses, or upon the chambers of ladies. I am sent to preach the Evangel of Jesus Christ to such as please to hear it. It hath two parts, repentance and faith. And now, Madam, in preaching repentance, it is necessary that the sins of men be so noted that they may know wherein they offend; but the most part of your Nobility are so addicted to your affections, that neither God, His Word, nor yet their commonwealth are rightly regarded. Therefore it becomes me so to speak, that they may know their duty. _Queen._ What have ye to do with my marriage? Or what are ye within this commonwealth?