of the church had previously admonished them to desist.
Knox one Sunday charged the Coxians from the pulpit with breaking the agreement. The matter was fully debated on the Tuesday following. Knox urged, in a spirit of bravado, that the Coxians should be admitted to vote as members of the congregation. He bade them condemn him if they dared. He was taken at his word, and the majority declared against him. He was now prohibited from preaching, and another conference of three days failed to reconcile the conflicting parties. On the third day Knox passionately denounced the proposal to use in the morning service prescribed words of prayer and praise not to be found in scripture. He was thereupon accused before the magistrates by a friend of Cox of treason in describing the emperor, in his ‘Admonition to the People of England,’ ‘as no less enemy to Christ than Nero,’ and in attacking Mary. The magistrates finally, through Williams and Whittingham, two of his friends, sent him an order to leave Frankfort. The night before he left he preached at his lodgings to some fifty persons on the Resurrection and the joys prepared for the elect. Escorted by his friends for a few miles, he proceeded at once to Geneva, where he was well received by Calvin, who condemned the proceedings of the majority. Ridley wrote to Grindal shortly before his own martyrdom, lamenting ‘that our brother Knox could not bear with our Book of Common Prayer,’ and while admitting that ‘a man (as he is) of wit and learning may find plausible grounds of dissent, doubted that he could soundly disprove it by God's word.’ But to Knox any colour of Roman ritual necessarily meant Roman doctrine, and was therefore anti-Christian.
On his return to Geneva, he and his friend Christopher Goodman [q. v.] were chosen ministers of the English congregation, but his heart still turned homewards. The register of the church of Nostre Dame la Neuve, to the south-east of the cathedral, where the congregation was allowed to worship, records in 1555 that Goodman and Anthony Gilby [q. v.] were appointed to fill Knox's place as minister in his absence. In August 1555 he went to Dieppe, crossed to the east coast of Scotland, and in November joined Mrs. Bowes and her daughter at Berwick. The comparative toleration which the regent was at that time allowing to the protestants enabled him to spend about nine months in his native country. The progress of the Reformation since he left Scotland had been rapid. He found houses open to him in every town, and, when the churches were closed, the seats of the country gentlemen became preaching centres. The converts to the new doctrines belonged to every class. Knox went through the country preaching, discussing, and writing. At Edinburgh he lodged with a burgess, James Sym, to whose house Erskine of Dun, in Angus, and many countrymen and their wives came to hear him. Among other topics he discussed at a supper given by the Laird of Dun the question, then much agitated, whether it was lawful to go to mass. Lethington was of the company, and ‘nothing was omitted,’ says Knox, ‘that might make for the temporiser;’ but every point was so fully answered that Lethington at last confessed, ‘I see that our shifts will save nothing before God, seeing they stand us in so small stead before man.’ From Edinburgh he went to Dun, where he stayed a month, preaching daily to the principal men of the county. From Dun he returned to Calder in West Lothian, the residence of Sir James Sandilands, one of whose sons was preceptor of Torphichen and head of the Knights Hospitallers in Scotland. He met there, besides many gentlemen, three young nobles, who became leaders in the Reformation: Lord Erskine, afterwards sixth earl of Mar, Lord Lorne, afterwards fifth earl of Argyll, and Lord James Stewart, prior of St. Andrews, afterwards the regent Murray. During the winter of 1555–6 he taught in Edinburgh, and after Christmas went to Kyle in Ayrshire, where the doctrine of the lollards still lingered, and preached in the houses of county gentlemen, chiefly small barons, who supported Knox in large numbers, while the burgesses were even more enthusiastic. For a time a common cause united burgh and country. Before Easter, 5 April 1556, Knox was summoned by the Earl of Glencairn to Finlayston, near Port Glasgow, and preached and administered the sacrament. He then returned to Calder, where disciples from Edinburgh and the country came to hear him, and to sit for the first time at the Lord's Table—a scene painted by Wilkie. A union, perhaps a formal bond of smaller numbers but of similar character to later covenants, ‘to maintain the true preaching of the gospel to the uttermost of their power,’ was hallowed by participation in the most sacred office of religion. Alarmed at the success of his preaching, the bishops summoned Knox to appear at the Blackfriars kirk in Edinburgh on 15 May 1556. He came, attended by John Erskine [q. v.] of Dun and a number of other gentlemen, like a feudal lord with his retainers, and the bishops suddenly dropped proceedings. Knox, instead of appearing as
