Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

Fotheringay Castle, it could hardly fail to put a
double sting into death to reflect that she had seen
the ruin of all her friends, and the utter overthrow
of all her projects, while the Reformation against
which she had so sorely combated was every year
striking its roots deeper in her native land.
From this blood-stained block, with the
headless corpse of a queen beside it, we turn to
another death-scene, tragic too -- not with horrors,
as the other, but with triumph. We stand in a
humble chamber at the foot of the High Street of
Edinburgh. Here, on this bed, is laid that head over
which so many storms had burst, to find at last the
rest which, wearied with toil and anxiety, it had so
earnestly sought. Noblemen, ministers, burgesses
pour in to see how Knox will die. As he had lived
so he dies, full of courage. From his dying bed he
exhorted, warned, admonished all who approached
him as he had done from the pulpit. His brethren in
the ministry he adjured to "abide by the eternal
truth of the Gospel." Noblemen and statesmen he
counseled to uphold the "Evangel" and not forsake
the Church of their native land, if they would have
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