On July 28, after the treaty of July 24, but before he heard of it, he insisted on the necessity of expelling the French, in a letter to the Reformers.

{149a} He "marvels that they omit such an opportunity to help themselves." He sent a letter of vague generalities in answer to their petitions for aid.

When he received, as he did, a copy of the terms of the treaty of July 24, in French, he would understand.
As further proof that Cecil was told what Knox and Kirkcaldy should have known to be untrue, we note that on August 28 the Regent, weary of the perpetual charges of perfidy anew brought against her, "ashamed not," writes Knox, to put forth a proclamation, in which she asserted that nothing, in the terms of July 23-24, forbade her to bring in more French troops, "as may clearly appear by inspection of the said Appointment, which the bearer has presently to show." {149b} Why should the Regent have been "ashamed" to tell the truth?
If the bearer showed a false and forged treaty, the Congregation must have denounced it, and produced the genuine document with the signatures.

Far from that, in a reply (from internal evidence written by Knox), they admit, "neither do we _here_ {149c} allege the breaking of the Appointment made at Leith (which, nevertheless, has manifestly been done), but"-- and here the writer wanders into quite other questions.
Moreover, Knox gives another reply to the Regent, "by some men," in which they write "we dispute not so much whether the bringing in of more Frenchmen be violating of the Appointment, which the Queen and her faction cannot deny to be manifestly broken by them in more cases than one," in no way connected with the French.

One of these cases will presently be stated--it is comic enough to deserve record--but, beyond denial, the brethren could not, and did not even attempt to make out their charge as to the Regent's breach of truce by bringing in new, or retaining old, French forces.
Our historians, and the biographers of Knox, have not taken the trouble to unravel this question of the treaty of July 24.