Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/108

 88 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [011.41 The falling off of his friends threw the weight of the battle upon Knox. In ' the Parliament time/ when the Lords, thinking then only of the Austrian Charles, had been congratulating one another on the great match in- tended for their Queen, Knox rose in the pulpit at St Giles's and told them all 'that whenever they, professing the Lord Jesus, consented that a Papist should be head of their sovereign, they did as far as in them lay to banish Christ from the realm ; they would bring God's venge- ance on their country, a plague on themselves, and perchance small comfort to their sovereign/ It was language which should not have been needed, for it was language which they should themselves have used. It was language which with the necessary change of diction any English statesman would have used from the Revolution till the present day. It contained but a plain political truth of which Knox happened to be the exponent. Mary recognized her enemy. Him alone she had failed to work upon, and believing herself sure of the Lords she gave her anger its course. In imagination Queen of Scotland, England, Ireland, Spain, Flanders, Naples, and the Indies in the full tide of hope and with the prize almost in her hands, she was in no humour to let a heretic preacher step between her and the soaring flights of her ambition. She sent for Knox, and her voice shaking between tears and passion, she said that never had prince been handled as she; she had borne his bitterness, she had admitted him to her presence, she had endured to be reprimanded, and