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. The contemporary diary, Diurnal of
Occurrences dates the _sending_ (the arrival must be meant) of the French
galleys, not on June 29, as Knox dates their arrival, but on July 24.
Professor Hume Brown says that the Diurnal gives the date as _June_ 24 (a
slip of the pen), "but Knox had surely the best opportunity of knowing
both facts" {27a}--that is, the number of the galleys, and the date of
their coming. Despite his unrivalled opportunities of knowledge, Knox
did not know. It is not quite correct to say that "Knox in his 'History'
shows throughout a conscientious regard to accuracy of statement."
Whatever the number of the galleys (Knox says twenty-one; the Diurnal
says sixteen), on July 13-14, they are reported by Lord Eure, at Berwick,
as passing or having just passed Eyemouth. {27b} They did not therefore
suffer for three weeks at the garrison's hands, or for three weeks desert