Dr. Laing puts the case more strongly than I feel justified in doing, for Knox, far from “boasting of his willingness to face the utmost torture,” more than once doubts his own readiness for martyrdom.  We must remember that even Blessed Edmund Campion, who went gaily to torture and death, had doubts as to the necessity of that journey. {40c}

Nor was there any reason why Knox should stay in England to be burned, if he could escape—­with less than ten groats in his pocket—­as he did.  It is not for us moderns to throw the first stone at a reluctant martyr, still less to applaud useless self-sacrifice, but we do take leave to think that, having fled early, himself, from the martyr’s crown, Knox showed bad taste in his harsh invectives against Protestants who, staying in England, conformed to the State religion under Mary Tudor.

It is not impossible that his very difficult position as the lover of Marjorie Bowes—­a position of which, while he remained in England, the burden fell on the poor girl—­may have been one reason for Knox’s flight, while the entreaties of his friends that he would seek safety must have had their influence.

On the whole it seems more probable that when he committed himself to matrimony with a young girl, the fifth daughter of Mrs. Bowes, he was approaching his fortieth rather than his fiftieth year.  Older than he are happy husbands made, sometimes, though Marjorie Bowes’s choice may have been directed by her pious mother, whose soul could find no rest in the old faith, and not much in the new.

At thirty-eight the Reformer, we must remember, must have been no uncomely wooer.  His conversation must have been remarkably vivid:  he had adventures enough to tell, by land and sea; while such a voice as he raised withal in the pulpit, like Edward Irving, has always been potent with women, as Sir Walter Scott remarks in Irving’s own case.  His expression, says Young, had a certain geniality; on the whole we need not doubt that Knox could please when he chose, especially when he was looked up to as a supreme authority.  He despised women in politics, but had many friends of the sex, and his letters to them display a manly tenderness of affection without sentimentality.

Writing to Mrs. Bowes from London in 1553, Knox mentions, as one of the sorrows of life, that “such as would most gladly remain together, for mutual comfort, cannot be suffered so to do.  Since the first day that it pleased the providence of God to bring you and me in familiarity, I have always delighted in your company.”  He then wanders into religious reflections, but we see that he liked Mrs. Bowes, and Marjorie Bowes too, no doubt:  he is careful to style the elderly lady “Mother.”  Knox’s letters to Mrs. Bowes show the patience and courtesy with which the Reformer could comfort and counsel a middle-aged lady in trouble about her innocent soul.  As she recited her infirmities, he reminds her, he “started back, and that is