to request the Emperor, to implore the Pope, "to stop and hinder their absolution." {25c} Knox very probably knew nothing of all this, but his efforts to throw the blame of treachery on his opponents are obviously futile.
As to the honesty of his associates--before the death of Henry VIII.
(January 28, 1547), the Castilians had promised him not to surrender the place without his consent, and to put Arran's son in his hands, promises which they also made, on Henry's death, to the English Government; in February they repeated these promises, quite incompatible with their vow to surrender if absolved.

Knox represents them as merely promising to Henry that they would return Arran's son, and support the plan of marrying Mary Stuart to Prince Edward of Wales! {26a} In March 1547, English ships gathered at Holy Island, to relieve the castle.

Not on June 21, 1547, as Knox alleges, but before April 2, the papal absolution for the murderers arrived.

They mocked at it; and the spy who reports the facts is told that they "would rather have a boll of wheat than all the Pope's remissions." {26b} Whatever the terms of the papal remission, they had already, before it arrived, bound themselves to England not to accept it save with English concurrence; and England, then preparing to invade Scotland, could not possibly concur.

Such was the honesty of Knox's party, and we already see how far his "History" deserves to be accepted as historical.
Next, what is most surprising, Knox's account of the month of ineffectual siege by the French, while he was actually in the castle, rests on a strange error of his memory.