Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/215

 THE MASSACRE OF ST BARTHOLOMEW. 195 claim the Inquisition to apologize, to evade to fling the responsibility of their past atrocities on the temper of other times on the intrigues of kings and statesmen, or on the errors of their own leaders then indeed their creed could be allowed to subside into a place among the religiones licit of the world. But the men who took from Popery its power to oppress, alone made its presence again endurable ; and only a sentimental ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation of the history of the sixteenth century can sustain the pretence that there was no true need of a harder and firmer hand. The reaction when the work was done, a romantic sympathy with the Stuarts, and the shallow liberalism which calls itself historical philosophy, has painted over the true Knox with the figure of a maniac. Even his very bones have been flung out of their resting-place, or none can tell where they are laid ; and yet but for him Mary Stuart would have bent Scotland to her pur- pose, and Scotland would have been the lever with which France and Spain would have worked on England. But for Knox and Burghley those two, but not one without the other Elizabeth would have been hurled from her throne, or have gone back into the Egypt to which she was too often casting wistful eyes. On the ist of January the fighting began I$T$. again. The Castle guns fired upon the town ; Januai T- and the attempt to entangle Morton in the responsibilities of government, without committing the Queen of Eng- land, having broken down, she was obliged to comply with his terms, to give him money, to acknowledge the