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Knox the duke's, a lord's daughter, a young lass not above sixteen years of age’ (Randolph to Cecil, January 1564). The queen ‘stormed wonderfully,’ for the bride was ‘of the blood and name.’ ‘If Mary keeps promise,’ Randolph proceeded, ‘he shall not long abide in Scotland. If I be not much deceived, there will be much ado before he leaves it.’ Knox himself does not mention the marriage, nor are any letters between him and his second wife preserved, but the union proved happy. He cannot be charged with marrying for money or rank. His father-in-law was one of his debtors in his will. The daughter of a smaller baron who embraced the reformed doctrine was not, in the opinion of its followers, disparaged by a union with a leader like Knox.

The assembly met on 25 June 1564, and Knox opened it with exhortation and prayer. It was attended only by the ministers and commissioners of provinces. The court party and the officers of state were absent. A conference between committees of the two parties was arranged, Knox being one of the representatives of the popular party, but nothing was to be decided on without the consent of the whole assembly. The principal subject of discussion was Knox's refusal of all compromise respecting the mass and his willingness to pray for the queen only on condition of her abandoning it. Lethington maintained passive obedience, Knox open resistance to the civil authority, however high, if opposed to God's ordinances. Knox resisted Lethington's proposal that a vote should be taken on the question ‘Whether it was proper to take the queen's mass from her’ unless the matter was submitted to the whole assembly. A few votes on subsidiary points were, however, taken, and Macgill, the clerk register, finding the votes going against the court, revived a suggestion that Knox should write to Calvin. The assembly broke up without coming to any conclusion.

Although Knox, like the rest of the protestant party, was opposed to the marriage with Darnley, and seems to have favoured the Earl of Leicester as a suitor for Mary's hand, he did not openly oppose the Darnley marriage. It was uncertain whether the young king might not turn protestant. On 19 Aug. 1565 Darnley went in state to St. Giles to hear Knox preach. The text was from Isaiah xxvi., beginning with the 13th verse, ‘O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have ruled us, but we will remember thee only and thy name;’ and quoted the passage, ‘I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. Children are their oppressors and women rule over them.’ He also referred to the punishment of Ahab because he did not correct the idolatry of Jezebel. Darnley left the church in displeasure. In the afternoon Knox was brought before the privy council and prohibited from preaching so long as the king and queen were in Edinburgh. The town council passed a resolution that they would ‘in no manner of way consent or grant that his mouth should be closed.’ Knox published this sermon, the only one of his we have in full. From the preface we learn that his practice was to preach without writing, and that he considered his vocation was to teach ‘by tongue and lively voice in these most corrupt days rather than to compose books for the ages to come.’ The printed sermon concludes: ‘The terrible roaring of guns and the noise of armour doe so pierce my heart that my soul thirsteth to depart. The last of August 1565, at four at afternoon, written indignantly, but truly as memory would serve of these things, that in public preaching I spake upon Sunday, the 19 of August.’ Mary and Darnley left Edinburgh on 25 Aug. The castle was still held for the queen, though the insurgent lords, led by Murray, occupied the town before the 31st. It does not clearly appear where Knox was during the troubled months of the Roundabout Raid. But if the statement in his ‘History’ is accurate, that the superintendents of Lothian met on 1 Oct. at Edinburgh, ‘all the ministers under his charge,’ he was probably present and joined in the supplication then sent to the king and queen for payment of ministers' stipends, to which a seemingly favourable but dilatory answer was returned, that ‘they would cause order to be taken to their contentment.’

On 25 Dec. 1565 the assembly met in Edinburgh, and Knox received a commission along with John Craig (1512?–1600) [q. v.] to ‘set down the Form of a Public Fast and cause Robert Lekprevik to print it.’ The tract was published early in 1566, under the title of ‘The Ordour and Doctrine of the General Faste appointed be the Generall Assemblie of the Kirkes of Scotland.’ ‘The Form of Excommunication,’ published in 1569, completed his labours on the standards of discipline, doctrine, and ritual of the reformed church of Scotland. As in the case of Knox's liturgical books, he emphasised the distinction between a public or general fast and the private fasting on set days of the Roman church. This fast was limited to a week, from the last Sunday of February 1566, of which only from Saturday at eight to Sunday at five was to be a time of abstinence, the rest being devoted to preaching and