High Street.] THE DEATH OF KNOX. 215
same chamber, was so sodainly amazed that she
took sickness and dyed ;I, an absurd fabrication, as
in the year after his death a pension was granted
to her and her three daughters, and she is known
to have been alive till about the end of the
sixteenth century.
In that old house, the abode of plebeians now,
have sat and debated again and again such men
as the Regent Murray, the cruel and crafty
Morton, the Lords Boyd, Ruthven, Ochiltree, and
the half-savage Lindsay-
? He whose iron eye
Oft saw fair Mary weep in vain; ?
Johnstone of Elphinstone, Fairiie, Campbell of
Kinyeoncleugh, Douglas of Drumlanrig, and all
who were the intimates of Knox ; and its old walls
have witnessed much and heard much that history
may never unravel.
It was while resident here that Knox?s enemies
are said-for there is little proof of the statement
-to have put a price upon his head, and that his
most faithful friends were under the necessity of
keeping watch around it during the night, and of
appointing a guard for the protection of his person
at times when he went abroad. When under
danger of hostility from the queen?s garrison in
the Castle, in the spring of 1571, M?Crie tells us
that ?one evening a musket-ball was fired in at
his window and lodged in the roof of the apartment
in which he was sitting. It happened that
he sat at the time in a different part of the room
from that which he had been accustomed to
occupy, otherwise the ball, from the direction it
took, must have struck him.?
It was probably after this that he retreated for a
time to St. Andrews, but he returned to his manse
in the end of August, 1572, while Kirkaldy was
still vigorously defending the fortress for his exiled
queen.
His bodily infirmities now increased daily, and
on the 11th of November he was attacked with a
cough which confined him to bed.
Two days before that he had conducted the
services at the induction of his colleague, Mr.
James Lawson, in St. Giles?s, and though he was
greatly debilitated, he performed the important
duties that devolved upon him with something of
his wonted fire and energy to those who heard
him for the last time. He then came down from
the pulpit, and leaning on his staff, and supported
by his faithful secretary, Richard Bannatyne (one
account says by his wife), he walked slowly down
the street to his own house, accompanied by the
whole congregation, watching, for the last time, his
feeble steps.
During his last illness, which endured about a
fortnight, he was visited by many of the principal
nobles and reformed preachers, to all of whom he
gave much advice; and on Monday, the 24th of
November, 1572, he expired in his sixty-seventh
year, having been born in 1505, during the reign
of James IV.
From this house his body was conveyed to its
last resting-place, on the south side of St. Gileo?s,
accompanied by a mighty multitude of all ranks,
where the newly-appointed Regent Morton pronounced
over the closing grave his well-known
eulogiuni.
That eastern nook of the old city, known as the
Nether Eow has many associations connected with
it besides the manse of Knox
Therein was the abode of Robert Lekprevik,
one of the earliest of Scottish printers, to whose
business it is supposed Bassandyne succeeded on
his removal to St. Andrews in 1570; and there, in
16 13, the authorities discovered that a residenter
named James Stewart, ? commonly called James of
Jerusalem, a noted Papist, and re-setter of seminary
prints,? was wont to have mass celebrated in his
house by Robert Philip, a priest returned from
Rome. Both men were arrested and tried on this
charge, together with a third, John Logan, portioner,
of Restalrig, who had formed one of the
small and secret congregation in Stewart?s house
in the Nether Bow. ?One cannot, in these days
of tolerance,? says Dr. Chambers, ? read without a
strange sense of uncouthness the solemn expressions
of horror employed in the dittays of the king?s advocates
against the offenders, being precisely the
same expressions that were used against heinous
offences of a more tangible nature.?
Logan was fined LI,OOO, and compelled to express
public penitence; and Philip and Stewart
were condemned to banishment from the realm of
Scotland.
In the Nether Bow was the residence of James
Sharp, who had been consecrated with great pomp
at Westminster, as Archbishop of St. Andrews, on
the 15th of November, 1661-a prelate famous for
his unrelenting persecution of the faithful adherents
of the Covenant which followed his elevation, and
justly increased the general odium of his character,
and who perished under the hands of pitiless assassins
on Magus Muir, in 1679.
Nicoll, the diarist, tells us, that on the 8th of
May, 1662, all the newly consecrated bishops were
convened in their gowns at the house of the Archbishop,
in the Nether Bow, from whence they proceeded
in state to the Parliament House, conducted
by two peers, the Earl of Kellie (who had been
