Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/304

284 there were two preachers—Rough, who was afterwards burnt by Bonner, and John Knox, who in that wild scene and wild company commenced his ministry. The garrison looked for help from England. Knox, with a shrewd insight which never failed him, told them that they should not see it. They talked of their walls. Their walls, he said, would be 'as egg-shells' against French cannon. The galleys fired on the castle from the sea: the batteries fired from the trenches and from the tower of the abbey. Heat and confinement brought the plague; and on the last of July, after six weeks' resistance, the defenders surrendered, under promise only of life, to the French commander. They were carried prisoners on board the galleys, while the castle itself, as the scene of a legate's murder was razed to the ground.

Without an effort to save them, the Scots, who had delivered England from the most dangerous and most successful of her enemies, were permitted to be overcome, not by a sudden attack, but by a long siege deliberately commenced and deliberately maintained; not at a place far inland and difficult of access, but on the sea, where the English affected a superiority, and at least could have forced a battle.

The attack, if not provoked, had been hastened by the injudicious pretensions which Somerset had advanced; and by his neglect he taught the Scottish Protestants that they could have no reliance upon him. The great families who had been gained over to the English interest, continued a pretended good feeling,