"[90] Now intercourse of so very close a
description, whether it be religious intercourse or not, is apt to
displease and disquiet a husband; and we know incidentally from Knox
himself that there was some little scandal about his intimacy with Mrs.
Bowes. "The slander and fear of men," he writes, "has impeded me to
exercise my pen so oft as I would; _yea, very shame hath holden me from
your company, when I was most surely persuaded that God had appointed me
at that time to comfort and feed your hungry and afflicted soul. God in
His infinite mercy_," he goes on, "_remove not only from me all fear
that tendeth not to godliness, but from others suspicion to judge of me
otherwise than it becometh one member to judge of another_. "[91] And the
scandal, such as it was, would not be allayed by the dissension in which
Mrs. Bowes seems to have lived with her family upon the matter of
religion, and the countenance shown by Knox to her resistance. Talking
of these conflicts, and her courage against "her own flesh and most
inward affections, yea, against some of her most natural friends" he
writes it, "to the praise of God, he has wondered at the bold constancy
which he has found in her when his own heart was faint. "[92]

Now, perhaps in order to stop scandalous mouths, perhaps out of a desire
to bind the much-loved evangelist nearer to her in the only manner
possible, Mrs. Bowes conceived the scheme of marrying him to her fifth
daughter, Marjorie; and the Reformer seems to have fallen in with it
readily enough. It seems to have been believed in the family that the
whole matter had been originally made up between these two, with no very
spontaneous inclination on the part of the bride. [93] Knox's idea of
marriage, as I have said, was not the same for all men; but on the
whole, it was not lofty. We have a curious letter of his, written at the
request of Queen Mary, to the Earl of Argyle, on very delicate household
matters; which, as he tells us, "was not well accepted of the said
Earl. "[94] We may suppose, however, that his own home was regulated in a
similar spirit. I can fancy that for such a man, emotional, and with a
need, now and again, to exercise parsimony in emotions not strictly
needful, something a little mechanical, something hard and fast and
clearly understood, would enter into his ideal of a home. There were
storms enough without, and equability was to be desired at the fireside
even at a sacrifice of deeper pleasures. So, from a wife, of all women,
he would not ask much. One letter to her which has come down to us is, I
had almost said, conspicuous for coldness. [95] He calls her, as he
called other female correspondents, "dearly beloved sister"; the epistle
is doctrinal, and nearly the half of it bears, not upon her own case,
but upon that of her mother. However, we know what Heine wrote in his
wife's album; and there is, after all, one passage that may be held to
intimate some tenderness, although even that admits of an amusingly
opposite construction. "I think," he says, "I _think_ this be the first
letter I ever wrote to you." This, if we are to take it literally, may
pair off with the "two _or three_ children" whom Montaigne mentions
having lost at nurse; the one is as eccentric in a lover as the other in
a parent. Nevertheless, he displayed more energy in the course of his
troubled wooing than might have been expected. The whole Bowes family,
angry enough already at the influence he had obtained over the mother,
set their faces obdurately against the match. And I daresay the
opposition quickened his inclination. I find him writing to Mrs. Bowes
that she need not further trouble herself about the marriage; it should
now be his business altogether; it behoved him now to jeopard his life
"for the comfort of his own flesh, both fear and friendship of all
earthly creatures laid aside. "[96] This is a wonderfully chivalrous
utterance for a Reformer forty-eight years old; and it compares well
with the leaden coquetries of Calvin, not much over thirty, taking this
and that into consideration, weighing together dowries and religious
qualifications and the instancy of friends, and exhibiting what M.
Bungener calls "an honourable and Christian difficulty" of choice, in
frigid indecisions and insincere proposals. But Knox's next letter is in
a humbler tone; he has not found the negotiation so easy as he fancied;
he despairs of the marriage altogether, and talks of leaving
England,--regards not "what country consumes his wicked carcass." "You
shall understand," he says, "that this sixth of November, I spoke with
Sir Robert Bowes" (the head of the family, his bride's uncle) "in the
matter you know, according to your request; whose disdainful, yea,
despiteful, words hath so pierced my heart that my life is bitter to me. I bear a good countenance with a sore-troubled heart, because he that
ought to consider matters with a deep judgment is become not only a
despiser, but also a taunter of God's messengers--God be merciful unto
him! Amongst others his most unpleasing words, while that I was about to
have declared my heart in the whole matter, he said, 'Away with your
rhetorical reasons! for I will not be persuaded with them.' God knows I
did use no rhetoric nor coloured speech; but would have spoken the
truth, and that in most simple manner. I am not a good orator in my own
cause; but what he would not be content to hear of me, God shall declare
to him one day to his displeasure, unless he repent. "[97] Poor Knox, you
see, is quite commoved. It has been a very unpleasant interview. And as
it is the only sample that we have of how things went with him during
his courtship, we may infer that the period was not as agreeable for
Knox as it has been for some others. However, when once they were married, I imagine he and Marjorie Bowes
hit it off together comfortably enough. The little we know of it may be
brought together in a very short space. She bore him two sons. He seems
to have kept her pretty busy, and depended on her to some degree in his
work; so that when she fell ill, his papers got at once into
disorder. [98] Certainly she sometimes wrote to his dictation; and, in
this capacity, he calls her "his left hand. "[99] In June, 1559, at the
headiest moment of the Reformation in Scotland, he writes regretting the
absence of his helpful colleague, Goodman, "whose presence" (this is the
not very grammatical form of his lament) "whose presence I more thirst,
than she that is my own flesh. "[100] And this, considering the source
and the circumstances, may be held as evidence of a very tender
sentiment. He tells us himself in his History, on the occasion of a
certain meeting at the Kirk of Field, that he was in no small heaviness
by reason of the late death of his "dear bedfellow, Marjorie
Bowes. "[101] Calvin, condoling with him, speaks of her as "a wife whose
like is not to be found everywhere" (that is very like Calvin), and
again, as "the most delightful of wives."