Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/38

18 'Thus ceased not Satan,' says Knox, 'by all means to maintain his kingdom of darkness, and to suppress the light of Christ's evangel. But potent is He against whom they fought; for when the wicked were in greatest security, God began to show his anger.' The Cardinal returned to St Andrew's. His own dungeons, too, were stocked with offenders of the same stamp and kind. The body of one of them, a friar, whom Knox calls 'godly learned,' was found one morning, when the day broke, stiff and stark, upon the rocks below the Sea Tower; and dark tales were whispered of murder in the vaults of the castle.

This was Scotland as the Pope desired to have it, and the Cardinal had preserved it. Law and order and government so far were on their side. It was to be seen whether the higher laws of truth and justice were still able to execute themselves. Henry VIII., in a letter to the Emperor, described the Scotch nobility as little better than wild beasts, sometimes hunting in a pack, sometimes tearing each other to pieces; but governed, so far as he could see, whether separate or united, only by a greedy ferocity. The Reformers alone were his true and cordial friends—men who with a nobler faith had assumed a nobler nature; whose eye was single; whose words were safer than the ' bonds ' of the lords. But, false and faithless as he had found the latter, he was forced to maintain among them some kind of party; and their mutual hatreds never left him long without