Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/156

136 the Upper House, but the Commons were again obstinate, and the monopoly could not be restored.

Nor was it only in Parliament that the Duke encountered awkward opposition.

John Knox, who since his dismissal from France had held a commission as a preacher in Durham and Northumberland, was looked upon as a desirable person to be promoted to a bishopric. The See of Rochester was vacated in the autumn of 1552 by the translation of Ponet to Winchester, and the Duke thought of nominating Knox to it; partly, he said, 'as a whetstone to quicken the Archbishop of Canterbury, whereof he had need,' and partly—a more singular reason—to put an end to Knox's ministrations in the north, where he had habitually disobeyed the Act of Uniformity, and had not cared to conceal his objections to the Prayerbook. Northumberland communicated his intentions in a personal interview, and was not gratified at the manner in which the intimation was received. Under no temptation would Knox have accepted an office which he believed to be antichristian; but with his hard grey eyes he looked through and through into the heart of the second Moses of John Bale, and he could not tell, he said, whether he were not 'a dissembler in religion.' In fact, he thought he could tell; and, not contented with refusing to take a favour at his hands, he held it to be his duty to make known his opinions to