Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/273

 THE JESUITS IN SCOTLAND. 257 through the winter and spring of 1581-82, at the very time when Lennox was plotting with the Jesuits, and lay- ing his plans for the coming in of the Duke of Guise. It seemed comparatively but a contemptible matter, yet it was the more necessary for the Duke to prove his strength by carrying his point. The General Assembly threatened Montgomery with excommunication. The King said they should be proclaimed traitors if they dared do it. They told him, as Knox had told his mother, that they must obey God rather than man, and that his own welfare lay in the maintenance of the Kirk, although he was not old enough to understand his position. The bishop elect attempted to take possession of Glasgow Cathedral pulpit. He was taken by the arm, lifted from the stairs, and ejected out of his church. Whispers had been heard of the coming in of Jesuits, and though Lennox's true character had been concealed under his Protestant oaths, a feeling was beginning to spread that he was not altogether what he seemed. A messenger sent to him by the Duke of Guise was recog- nized as a person who had been concerned in the mas- sacre of Paris ; and one of the Edinburgh ministers, John Durie, denounced both Lennox and Arran in a sermon as corrupters of the King's mind. Durie was summoned to answer for himself at Dalkeith, where Lennox was now established in the castle which had once been Morton's. The rabble of the household was set on to insult him. ' The Duke's French cooks came out of the kitchen with spits and great knives to invade VOL. XI. 17