Three days later he wrote to the nobles who had summoned him seven months earlier.

He had received, he said, at Dieppe two private letters of a discouraging sort; one correspondent said that the enterprise was to be reconsidered, the other that the boldness and constancy required "for such an enterprise" were lacking among the nobles.

Meanwhile Knox had spent his time, or some of it, in asking the most godly and the most learned of Europe, including Calvin, for opinions of such an adventure, for the assurance of his own conscience and the consciences of the Lord James, Erskine, Lorne, and the rest.

{76a} This indicates that Knox himself was not quite sure of the lawfulness of an armed rising, and perhaps explains his long delay.

Knox assures us that Calvin and other godly ministers insisted on his going to Scotland.