"Mary of Guise," says Knox's biographer, Professor Hume Brown, "had the instincts of a good ruler--the love of order and justice, and the desire to stand well with the people." Knox, however, believed, or chose to say, that she wanted to cut all Protestant throats, just as he believed that a Protestant king should cut all Catholic throats.

He attributed to her, quite erroneously and uncharitably, his own unsparing fervour.

As he held this view of her character and purposes, it is not strange that a journey to Scotland was "contrairious to his judgement." He did not understand the situation.

Ferocious as had been the English invasion of Scotland in 1547, the English party in Scotland, many of them paid traitors, did not resent these "rebukes of a friend," so much as both the nobles and the people now began to detest their French allies, and were jealous of the Queen Mother's promotion of Frenchmen.
There were not, to be sure, many Scots whom she, or any one, could trust.
Some were honestly Protestant: some held pensions from England: others would sacrifice national interests to their personal revenges and clan feuds.

The Rev.the Lord James Stewart, Mary's bastard brother, Prior of St.Andrews and of Pittenweem, was still very young.