These violent measures for opposing justice were little short of rebellion; and Knox was summoned before the council to answer for his offence.

The courage of the man was equal to his insolence.

He scrupled not to tell the queen that the pestilent Papists who had inflamed her against these holy men were the sons of the devil; and must therefore obey the directions of their father, who had been a liar and a manslayer from the beginning.
The matter ended with the full acquittal of Knox.[**] Randolph, the English ambassador in Scotland, had reason to write to Cecil, speaking of the Scottish nation, "I think marvellously of the wisdom of God, that gave this unruly, inconstant, and cumbersome people no more power nor substance; for they would otherwise run wild."[***] * Knox.
** Knox, p.

336, 342.
*** Keith, p.

202.
We have related these incidents at greater length than the necessity of our subject may seem to require; but even trivial circumstances, which show the manners of the age, are often more instructive, as well as entertaining, than the great transactions of wars and negotiations, which are nearly similar in all periods and in all countries of the world.
The reformed clergy in Scotland had at that time a very natural reason for their ill humor; namely, the poverty, or rather beggary, to which they were reduced.