devotes eighteen pages to his own call to the ministry by the castle
people, and to his controversies and sermons in St. Andrews. He then
returns to history, and avers that, about June 21, 1547, the papal
absolution was presented to the garrison merely as a veil for a
treasonable attack, but was rejected, as it included the dubious phrase,
Remittimus irremissibile--"We remit the crime that cannot be remitted."
Nine days later, June 29, he says, by "the treasonable mean" of Arran,
Archbishop Hamilton, and Mary of Guise, twenty-one French galleys, and
such an army as the Firth had never seen, hove into view, and on June 30
summoned the castle to surrender. The siege of St Andrews Castle, from
the sea, by the French then began, but the garrison and castle were
unharmed, and many of the galley slaves and some French soldiers were
slain, and a ship was driven out of action. The French "shot two days"
only. On July 19 the siege was renewed by land, guns were mounted on the
spires of St. Salvator's College chapel and on the Cathedral, and did
much scathe, though, during the first three weeks of the siege, the
garrison "had many prosperous chances." Meanwhile Knox prophesied the
defeat of his associates, because of "their corrupt life." They had
robbed and ravished, and were probably demoralised by Knox's prophecies.
On the last day of July the castle surrendered. {24} Knox adds that his
friends would deal with France alone, as "Scottish men had all
traitorously betrayed them."

Now much of this narrative is wrong; wrong in detail, in suggestion, in
omission. That a man of fifty, or sixty, could attribute the attacks on
Beaton's murderers to mere revenge, specially to that of a "wanton
widow," Mary of Guise (who had, we are to believe, so much of the
Cardinal's attentions as his mistress, Mariotte Ogilvy, could spare), is
significant of the spirit in which Knox wrote history. He had a strong
taste for such scandals as this about the "wanton widow."