Marriage Of Mary and Darnley

On the 28th of July 1565, Darnley was proclaimed King at the Market Cross of Edinhurgh. The banns had already been published in the usual form in the Canougate Kirk, and on the following day, being Sunday, at six
o’clock in the morning, he was married to the Queen, in the chapel of Holyrood House, by the Dean of Restalrig. During several days nothing was heard at the court but rejoicing and costly banquets, while the people were treated with public sports.

The marriage, however, excited the strongest displeasure of the reformers. Knox, on learning of its proposal, regarded it with especial indignation, and in one of his
boldest and most vehement harangues, in St Giles church, challenged the nobles and other leaders of the Congregation for betraying the cause of God by their inaction.

“I see,” said he, suddenly stretching out his arms, as if he would leap from the pulpit, and arrest the passing vision, “I see before me your beleaguered camp. I hear the tramp of the horsemen as they charged you in the streets of Edinburgh ; and most of all, is that dark
and dolorous night now present to my eyes, in which all of you, my lords, in shame aod fear, left this town, God
forbid I should ever forget it! “

He concluded with solemn warning against the royal marriage, aod the judgments it involved. Such was his vehemence, says Melvil, that “he was like to ding the pulpit in blads, and flee out of it.

This freedom of speech gave general offence, and Knox was summnned before the Queen ; he came to court after dinner, and was brought into her court by Erskine of Dun, one of the superintendents of the kirk ; but the presence of royalty was no restraint ; she wept as she listened to his bold harangues ; and he left her at length, as she yielded anew to a passiunate flood of tears. As
he passed from the outer chamher, he paused in the midst of a gay circle of the ladies of the royal household, in their gorgeous apparel, and addressed them in a grave style of banter on the pity that the silly soul could not carry all these fine garnishings with it to heaven l

Queen Mary dried her tears, and took no further notice of this interview; but Knox must have been regarded, amid the gay haunts of royalty at Holyrood, like the skull that checked the merriment of an old Egyptian feast.

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