Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/221

 JOHN KNOX 147 At the moment of his arrival the Lords of the Congregation, as the Protestant nobility termed themselves, were in open revolt against the regent. By his preaching at Perth and St. Andrews Knox gained these important towns to his cause, and by his labors in Edinburgh, of which he was appointed minister, he also won a strong party against the government. But the reformers, of their own resources, could not hold their ground against the regent, subsidized by France with money and soldiers. Mainly, therefore, through the efforts of Knox, who all through his public career was deep in the politics of the time, the assistance of England was obtained against what was now deemed the French invasion. The help of England proved effective, and by the treaty of Leith (1560), and the death of the regent the same year, the insurgent party became masters of the country. The estates of Parliament having met on August ist, the ministers were ordered to draw up a Confession of Faith which should embody the new teaching, and on August i ;th Protestantism was formally established as the re- ligion of the country. Having gained thus much, the ministers, desirous of prac- tical results from their victory, drew up the first Book of Discipline a document ever memorable in the history of Scotland, and admirable in itself for its wise and liberal suggestions for the religious and educational organization of the country. These suggestions, however, were little to the mind of the majority of the Prot- estant nobles, who, " perceiving their carnal liberty and worldly commodity to be impaired thereby," sneeringly spoke of them as " devote imaginations. " In the revolution that had been accomplished Knox had been the leading spirit ; but he saw that the victory was as yet only half gained, and that the deadliest struggle had still to be decided. The return of the young queen to Scotland (August, 1561) revived all the old dissensions, and introduced new elements into the strife of parties. By every opinion she held on religion, on the relations of prince and subject, on the fun- damental principles of life, Mary was separated as by an abyss from the party represented by Knox. If we may judge from the language which each used of the other, Knox and she failed to find one point on which genial intercourse was possible. As the minister of St. Giles (then the only Reformed church in Edinburgh), Knox believed that Mary was his special charge. Her personal conduct, therefore, no less than her public policy, were made the subject of his most stringent criticism ; and during the six years of her reign his attitude toward her was that of uncompromising insistance. The celebration of mass in Holyrood Chapel, in defiance of the late religious settlement, first roused his wrath ; and a sermon delivered by him in St. Giles led to the first of those fa- mous interviews with Mary, the record of which makes such a remarkable por- tion of his " History of the Reformation." The division of ecclesiastical prop- erty, by which those in actual possession received two -thirds, the reformed ministers one-third, was a further ground of quarrel with the new government. The delay of Mary to confirm the late religious settlement also gave rise to the greatest anxiety on the part of Knox and his brother ministers. In view of the precarious interests of the great cause, Knox spoke out with such frankness