Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/210

 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 58. quired with reason, he would renounce the regiment/ l In the midst of these chicaneries, an event had taken place by the side of which they were doubly contempt- ible. The apostle of the Reformation had passed away passed away, noble in death as in life, the one su- premely great man that Scotland possessed the one man without whom Scotland, as the modern world has known it, would have had no existence. Shortly after Knox's last sermon, a paralytic stroke prostrated his remaining strength ; he became unable to read, and for a day or two his mind was wandering. He recovered his senses, but only to know that the end was not far off; and still thinking of his country, and of his country's present trials, he sent for the elders of the Kirk, to charge them for the last time to be con- stant. His next anxiety was for Grange. Grange, who, as a boy, had shared in that forlorn enterprise at St An- drews when Beton went to his account, was a person whom Knox had long loved and prized. In the last years, by some fatality, he had been led by Maitland into the ways of foolishness ; beyond and beside the spiritual aspects of the matter, none knew better than Knox in what way the long obstinacy of the defenders of the Oastle would end at last, and he made a final effort to save his old friend from destroying himself. his bedside, * Go to yon man of the Castle. Tell him I warn him in the name of God to leave that evil cause,
 * Go/ he said to David Lindsay, a minister who came to

1 Killigrew to Burghley, January i : MSS. Scotland.