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Updated: June 20, 2025
The French garrison of Leith made successful sorties; and despite the valour of Arran and Lord James and the counsel of Lethington, the godly fled from Edinburgh on November 5, under taunts and stones cast by the people of the town. The fugitives never stopped till they reached Stirling, when Knox preached to them.
A hint in a letter of Randolph's of August 24, may point to nascent scandal about the pair. But the printed sermon, from Knox's written copy, reads, not "harlot" but "idolatrous wife." He was attended by a great crowd of notable citizens, but Lethington forbade him to preach for a fortnight or three weeks.
"It would make a bastard of him, you mean?" she cried, demanding the full expansion of their thoughts. "Indeed it would do no less," the secretary assented. "So that," said Bothwell, softly, "we come back to Alexander's method. What the fingers may not unravel, the knife can sever." She shivered, and drew her furred cloak the more closely about her. Lethington leaned forward.
Cecil's spies were everywhere, and the plot was soon known and stopped by Elizabeth, violently angry with her kinswoman for listening to such a scheme. But Murray and Lethington, in desperation, were aiming at higher game even than this.
The Duke, Arran, Lord James, and a few barons, including the ruffian Andrew Ker of Faldonside, with Glencairn and Ochiltree, signed it, in token of approval, but little came of it all. Lethington, probably, was the scoffer who styled these provisions "devout imaginations."
"Everything that repugned to their corrupt affections was termed in their mockage 'devout imaginations," says Knox: and it was no doubt Lethington from whose quiver this winged word came, with so many more.
From this time, Bothwell was her one ally. She had the policy and the self-control to profess a desire for reconciliation even with Darnley: to receive Murray and even Lethington into apparent favour. But Darnley's brief rapprochement with the lords was soon over; his intolerable arrogance was made the worse by his contemptibility.
The conduct of diplomacy with England was thus in capable hands, and Lethington was a persona grata to the English Queen. Meanwhile the victorious Regent behaved with her wonted moderation. "She pursueth no man that hath showed himself against her at this time." The truth is that the Cause of Knox, far from being desperate, as for an hour it seemed to the faint-hearted, had never looked so well.
"Yes," she said slowly, musingly, and again, "yes. That were a way. That is the way." And then suddenly she looked up, and they saw doubt and dread in her eyes. "But in that case what of my son?" "Aye!" said Lethington grimly. He shrugged his narrow shoulders, parted his hands, and brought them together again. "That's the obstacle, as we perceived. It would imperil his succession."
Lethington, in France, had told the Queen- Mother that the Spanish plan was only intended to wring concessions from Elizabeth; and, on his return to England, had persuaded the Spanish Ambassador that Charles IX. was anxious to succeed to his brother's widow.
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