.
in that deaf ear that never would hear the truth of God" (December 5, 1560).

We have little of Knox's poetry, but he probably composed a translation, in verse, of a Latin poem indited by one of "the godly in France," whence he borrowed his phrase "a rotten ear" (aure putrefacta corruit).
"Last Francis, that unhappy child, His father's footsteps following plain, To Christ's crying deaf ears did yield, A rotten ear was then his bane." The version is wonderfully close to the original Latin.
Meanwhile, Francis was hardly cold before Arran wooed his idolatrous widow, Queen Mary, "with a gay gold ring." She did not respond favourably, and "the Earl bare it heavily in his heart, and more heavily than many would have wissed," says Knox, with whom Arran was on very confidential terms.

Knox does not rebuke his passion for Jezebel.

He himself "was in no small heaviness by reason of the late death of his dear bedfellow, Marjorie Bowes," of whom we know very little, except that she worked hard to lighten the labours of Knox's vast correspondence.

He had, as he says, "great intelligence both with the churches and some of the Court of France," and was the first to receive news of the perilous illness of the young King.