If women's rule is
not unnatural in a sense preclusive of its very existence, it is neither
so convenient nor so profitable as the government of men. He holds
England to be specially suitable for the government of women, because
there the governor is more limited and restrained by the other members
of the constitution than in other places; and this argument has kept his
book from being altogether forgotten. It is only in hereditary
monarchies that he will offer any defence of the anomaly. "If rulers
were to be chosen by lot or suffrage, he would not that any women should
stand in the election, but men only." The law of succession of crowns
was a law to him, in the same sense as the law of evolution is a law to
Mr. Herbert Spencer; and the one and the other counsels his readers, in
a spirit suggestively alike, not to kick against the pricks or seek to
be more wise than He who made them. [73] If God has put a female child
into the direct line of inheritance, it is God's affair. His strength
will be perfected in her weakness. He makes the Creator address the
objectors in this not very flattering vein: "I, that could make Daniel,
a sucking babe, to judge better than the wisest lawyers; a brute beast
to reprehend the folly of a prophet; and poor fishers to confound the
great clerks of the world--cannot I make a woman to be a good ruler over
you?" This is the last word of his reasoning. Although he was not
altogether without Puritanic leaven, shown particularly in what he says
of the incomes of Bishops, yet it was rather loyalty to the old order of
things than any generous belief in the capacity of women, that raised up
for them this clerical champion. His courtly spirit contrasts singularly
with the rude, bracing republicanism of Knox. "Thy knee shall bow," he
says, "thy cap shall off, thy tongue shall speak reverently of thy
sovereign." For himself, his tongue is even more than reverent. Nothing
can stay the issue of his eloquent adulation. Again and again, "the
remembrance of Elizabeth's virtues" carries him away; and he has to hark
back again to find the scent of his argument. He is repressing his
vehement adoration throughout, until when the end comes, and he feels
his business at an end, he can indulge himself to his heart's content in
indiscriminate laudation of his royal mistress. It is humorous to think
that this illustrious lady, whom he here praises, among many other
excellences, for the simplicity of her attire and the "marvellous
meekness of her stomach," threatened him, years after, in no very meek
terms, for a sermon against female vanity in dress, which she held as a
reflection on herself. [74]

Whatever was wanting here in respect for women generally, there was no
want of respect for the Queen; and one cannot very greatly wonder if
these devoted servants looked askance, not upon Knox only, but on his
little flock, as they came back to England tainted with disloyal
doctrine. For them, as for him, the occidental star rose somewhat red
and angry. As for poor Knox, his position was the saddest of all. For
the juncture seemed to him of the highest importance; it was the nick of
time, the flood-water of opportunity. Not only was there an opening for
him in Scotland, a smouldering brand of civil liberty and religious
enthusiasm which it should be for him to kindle into flame with his
powerful breath; but he had his eye seemingly on an object of even
higher worth. For now, when religious sympathy ran so high that it could
be set against national aversion, he wished to begin the fusion together
of England and Scotland, and to begin it at the sore place. If once the
open wound were closed at the Border, the work would be half done. Ministers placed at Berwick and such places might seek their converts
equally on either side of the march; old enemies would sit together to
hear the gospel of peace, and forget the inherited jealousies of many
generations in the enthusiasm of a common faith; or--let us say
better--a common heresy. For people are not most conscious of
brotherhood when they continue languidly together in one creed, but
when, with some doubt, with some danger perhaps, and certainly not
without some reluctance, they violently break with the tradition of the
past, and go forth from the sanctuary of their fathers to worship under
the bare heaven. A new creed, like a new country, is an unhomely place
of sojourn; but it makes men lean on one another and join hands. It was
on this that Knox relied to begin the union of the English and the
Scottish. And he had, perhaps, better means of judging than any even of
his contemporaries. He knew the temper of both nations; and already
during his two years' chaplaincy at Berwick, he had seen his scheme put
to the proof. But whether practicable or not, the proposal does him much
honour. That he should thus have sought to make a love-match of it
between the two peoples, and tried to win their inclination towards a
union instead of simply transferring them, like so many sheep, by a
marriage, or testament, or private treaty, is thoroughly characteristic
of what is best in the man. Nor was this all. He had, besides, to assure
himself of English support, secret or avowed, for the Reformation party
in Scotland; a delicate affair, trenching upon treason. And so he had
plenty to say to Cecil, plenty that he did not care to "commit to paper
neither yet to the knowledge of many." But his miserable publication had
shut the doors of England in his face. Summoned to Edinburgh by the
confederate lords, he waited at Dieppe, anxiously praying for leave to
journey through England. The most dispiriting tidings reached him. His
messengers, coming from so obnoxious a quarter, narrowly escape
imprisonment. His old congregation are coldly received, and even begin
to look back again to their place of exile with regret. "My First
Blast," he writes ruefully, "has blown from me all my friends of
England." And then he adds, with a snarl, "The Second Blast, I fear,
shall sound somewhat more sharp, except men be more moderate than I hear
they are. "[75] But the threat is empty; there will never be a second
blast--he has had enough of that trumpet. Nay, he begins to feel
uneasily that, unless he is to be rendered useless for the rest of his
life, unless he is to lose his right arm and go about his great work
maimed and impotent, he must find some way of making his peace with
England and the indignant Queen. The letter just quoted was written on
the 6th of April, 1559; and on the 10th, after he had cooled his heels
for four days more about the streets of Dieppe, he gave in altogether,
and writes a letter of capitulation to Cecil.