Castle.  Lord James’s Earldom of Moray was now publicly announced (September 18), and Huntly was accused of a desire to murder him and Lethington, while his son John was to seize the Queen. {221b} Mary was “utterly determined to bring him to utter confusion.”  Huntly was put to the horn on October 18; his sons took up arms.  Huntly, old and corpulent, died during a defeat at Corrichie without stroke of sword; his mischievous son John was taken and executed, Mary being pleased with her success, and declaring that Huntly thought “to have married her where he would,” {221c} and to have slain her brother.  John Gordon confessed to the murder plot. {221d} His eldest brother, Lord Gordon, who had tried to enlist Bothwell and the Hamiltons, lay long in prison (his sister married Bothwell just before Riccio’s murder).  The Queen had punished the disobedience which she “went to seek,” and Moray was safe in his rich earldom, while a heavy blow was dealt at the Catholicism which Huntly had protected. {222a} Cardinal Guise reports her success to de Rennes, in Austria, with triumph, and refers to an autograph letter of hers, of which Lethington’s draft has lately perished by fire, unread by historians.  As the Cardinal reports that she says she is trying to win her subjects back to the Church, “in which she wishes to live and die” (January 30, 1562-63), Lethington cannot be the author of that part of her lost letter. {222b}

Knox meanwhile, much puzzled by the news from the north, was in the western counties.  He induced the lairds of Ayrshire to sign a Protestant band, and he had a controversy with the Abbot of Crosraguel.  In misapplication of texts the abbot was even more eccentric than Knox, though he only followed St. Jerome.  In his “History” Knox “cannot certainly say whether there was any secret paction and confederacy between the Queen herself and Huntly.” {222c} Knox decides that though Mary executed John Gordon and other rebels, yet “it was the destruction of others that she sought,” namely, of her brother, whom she hated “for his godliness and upright plainness.” {222d} His upright simplicity had won him an earldom and the destruction of his rival!  He and Lethington may have exaggerated Huntly’s iniquities in council with Mary, but the rumours reported against her by Knox could only be inspired by the credulity of extreme ill-will.  He flattered himself that he kept the Hamiltons quiet, and, at a supper with Randolph in November, made Chatelherault promise to be a good subject in civil matters, and a good Protestant in religion.

Knox says that preaching was done with even unusual vehemence in winter, when his sermon against the Queen’s dancing for joy over some unknown Protestant misfortune was actually delivered, and the good seed fell on ground not wholly barren.  The Queen’s French and Scots musicians would not play or sing at the Queen’s Christmas-day Mass, whether pricked in heart by conscience, or afraid for their lives.  “Her poor soul is so troubled for the preservation of her silly Mass that she knoweth not where to turn for defence of it,” says Randolph. {223a} These persecutions may have gone far to embitter the character of the victim.