At this time Elizabeth, Leicester, and Cecil desired to hand over Queen Mary to Mar, the Regent, “to proceed with her by way of justice,” a performance not to be deferred, “either for Parliament or a great Session.”  Very Petty Sessions indeed, if any, were to suffice for the trial of the Queen. {270} There are to be no “temporising solemnities,” all are to be “stout and resolute in execution,” Leicester thus writes to an unknown correspondent on October 10.  Killigrew, who was to arrange the business with Mar, was in Scotland by September 19.  On October 6, Killigrew writes that Knox is very feeble but still preaching, and that he says, if he is not a bishop, it is by no fault of Cecil’s.  “I trust to satisfy Morton,” says Killigrew, “and as for John Knox, that thing, as you may see by my letter to Mr. Secretary, is done and doing daily; the people in general well bent to England, abhorring the fact in France, and fearing their tyranny.”

“That thing” is not the plan for murdering Mary without trial; if Killigrew meant that he had obtained Knox’s assent to that, he would not write “that thing is doing daily.”  Even Morton, more scrupulous than Elizabeth and Cecil, said that “there must be some kind of process” (trial, proces), attended secretly by the nobles and the ministers.  The trial would be in Mary’s absence, or would be brief indeed, for the prisoner was not to live three hours after crossing the Border!  Others, unnamed, insisted on a trial; the Queen had never been found guilty.  Killigrew speaks of “two ministers” as eager for the action, but nothing proves that Knox was one of them.  While Morton and Mar were haggling for the price of Mary’s blood, Mar died, on October 28, and the whole plot fell through. {271} Anxious as Knox had declared himself to be to “strike at the root,” he could not, surely, be less scrupulous about a trial than Morton, though the decision of the Court was foredoomed.  Sandys, the Bishop of London, advised that Mary’s head should be chopped off!

On November 9, 1572, Knox inducted Mr. Lawson into his place as minister at St. Giles’s.  On the 13th he could not read the Bible aloud, he paid his servants, and gave his man a present, the last, in addition to his wages.  On the 15th two friends came to see Knox at noon, dinner time.  He made an effort, and for the last time sat at meat with them, ordering a fresh hogshead of wine to be drawn.  “He willed Archibald Stewart to send for the wine so long as it lasted, for he would never tarry until it were drunken.”  On the 16th the Kirk came to him, by his desire; and he protested that he had never hated any man personally, but only their errors, nor had he made merchandise of the Word.  He sent a message to Kirkcaldy bidding him repent, or the threatenings should fall on him and the Castle.  His exertions increased his illness.  There had been a final quarrel with the dying Lethington, who complained that Knox, in sermons and otherwise, charged