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The first Parliament since her landing had been summoned for June, and Moray and Lethington seem to have suggested to Knox that the Queen would be glad then to ratify the Acts of 1560, in exchange for the approval by the estates of some suitable marriage. Even now, it was these two heads of the Protestant party whom Knox trusted rather than Mary.
The Ministers of Mary, les politiques, indulged in dreams equally distasteful to the Catholics and to the more precise of the godly; dreams that came through the Ivory Gate; with pictures of the island united, and free from the despotism of Giant Pope and Giant Presbyter. A schism between the brethren and their old leaders and advisers, Lord James and Lethington, was the result.
Both he and Lethington probably desired to protect her. Meantime however, Elizabeth was demanding her release, the successful rebellion of subjects against their lawful prince being by no means to her liking.
"Mingle- mangle ministry, Popish order, and Popish apparel," they will not bear. Knox's arguments in favour of their conforming, for the time at all events, are quoted and refuted: "And also concerning Paul his purifying at Jerusalem." The analogy of Paul's conformity had been rejected by Knox, at the supper party with Lethington in 1556.
He wrote, in Latin, treatises on divinity and morals, and a History of Greater Britain, in which the separate histories of England and Scotland were brought together, pub. at Paris . In his writings, while upholding the doctrinal teaching of Rome, he was outspoken in condemning the corruptions of the clergy. Poet, f. of M. of Lethington, Sec. of State to Mary Queen of Scots.
On April 24th, as she approached Edinburgh, Bothwell accordingly met her at the head of eight hundred spearmen, assured her as she afterward averred that she was in the utmost peril, and escorted her, together with Huntly, Lethington, and Melville, who were then in attendance, to Dunbar castle.
She was the "merchandise," and Lethington and Lord James wished to make Elizabeth acknowledge the Scottish Queen as her successor, the alternative being to seek her price as a wife for an European prince. An "union of hearts" with England might conceivably mean Mary's acceptance of the Anglican faith. In his eyes Anglicanism was "a bastard religion," "a mingle-mangle now commanded in your kirks."
At this time the Castle of Edinburgh was held in the Queen's interest by Kirkcaldy of Grange, who seems to have been won over by the guile of Lethington. That politician needed a shelter from the danger of the Lennox feud, and the charge of having been guilty of Darnley's murder.
"There are three things," said Lethington, "that never liked me; but the first is, 'To pray for the Queen's Majestie with ane condition saying, "Illumine her heart if Thy good pleasure be," whereby it may appear that ye doubt of her conversion. Where have ye the example of such prayer?"
It did not seem perhaps of great importance to her that the preachers should breathe anathemas against every one who tolerated the mass in her private chapel, or that the lords and their most brilliant spokesman, her secretary Lethington, should threaten to stop the Assemblies of the Church in retaliation.
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