Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/214

 104 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [crt. 58. when English history may do justice to one but for whom the Reformation would have been overthrown among ourselves ; for the spirit which Knox created saved Scotland ; and if Scotland had been Catholic again, neither the wisdom of Elizabeth's ministers, nor the teaching of her bishops, nor her own chicaneries, would have preserved England from revolution. His was the voice which taught the peasant of the Lothians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with the proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his fore- fathers. He was the one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften nor Maitland deceive ; he it was that raised the poor Commons of his country into a stern and rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, superstitious, and fanatical, but who nevertheless were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest could force again to sub- mit to tyranny. And his reward has been the ingrati- tude of those who should most have done honour to his memory. The change of times has brought with it the tolera- tion which Knox denounced, and has established the compromises which Knox most feared and abhorred, and he has been described as a raving demagogue, an enemy of authority, a destroyer of holy things, a wild and furious bigot. But the Papists which Knox grappled with and overthrew the Papists of Philip II., of Mary Tudor, and Pius Y. were not the mild forbearing in- nocents into which the success of the Reformation has transformed the modern Catholics. When their power to kill was taken from them, when they learnt to dis-