"Of any virtue that ever was espied in King James V.( _whose daughter she_," Mary Stuart, "_is called_"), "to this hour (1566) we have seen no sparkle to appear." {168} With this final fling at the chastity of Mary of Guise, the Reformer takes leave of the woman whom he so bitterly hated.

Yet, "Knox was not given to the practice so common in his day, of assassinating reputations by vile insinuations." Posterity has not accepted, contemporary English historians did not accept, Knox's picture of Mary of Guise as the wanton widow, the spawn of the serpent, who desired to cut the throat of every Protestant in Scotland.

She was placed by circumstances in a position from which there was no issue.

The fatal French marriage of her daughter was a natural step, at a moment when Scottish independence could only be maintained by help of France.

Had she left the Regency in the hands of Chatelherault, that is, of Archbishop Hamilton, the prelate was not the man to put down Protestantism by persecution, and so save the situation.
If he had been, Mary of Guise was not the woman to abet him in drastic violence.