His answers prove that he was out of harmony with the fluctuating
Anglicanism of the hour. Northumberland could not then resent the
audacities of pulpiteers, because the Protestants were the only party who
might stand by him in his approaching effort to crown Lady Jane Grey. Now
all the King's preachers, obviously by concerted action, "thundered"
against Edward's Council, in the Lent or Easter of 1553. Manifestly, in
the old Scots phrase, "the Kirk had a back"; had some secular support,
namely that of their party, which Northumberland could not slight.
Meanwhile Knox was sent on a preaching tour in Buckinghamshire, and there
he was when Edward VI. died, in the first week of July 1553. {38b}

Knox's official attachment to England expired with his preaching license,
on the death of Edward VI. and the accession of Mary Tudor. He did not
at once leave the country, but preached both in London and on the English
border, while the new queen was settling herself on the throne. While
within Mary's reach, Knox did not encourage resistance against that
idolatress; he did not do so till he was safe in France. Indeed, in his
prayer used after the death of Edward VI., before the fires of Oxford and
Smithfield were lit, Knox wrote: "Illuminate the heart of our Sovereign
Lady, Queen Mary, with pregnant gifts of the Holy Ghost. . . . Repress
thou the pride of those that would rebel. . . . Mitigate the hearts of
those that persecute us."

In the autumn of 1553, Knox's health was very bad; he had gravel, and
felt his bodily strength broken. Moreover, he was in the disagreeable
position of being betrothed to a very young lady, Marjorie Bowes, with
the approval of her devout mother, the wife of Richard Bowes, commander
of Norham Castle, near Berwick, but to the anger and disgust of the Bowes
family in general. They by no means shared Knox's ideas of religion,
rather regarding him as a penniless unfrocked "Scot runagate," whose