doubt that Knox could please when he chose, especially when he was looked
up to as a supreme authority. He despised women in politics, but had
many friends of the sex, and his letters to them display a manly
tenderness of affection without sentimentality.

Writing to Mrs. Bowes from London in 1553, Knox mentions, as one of the
sorrows of life, that "such as would most gladly remain together, for
mutual comfort, cannot be suffered so to do. Since the first day that it
pleased the providence of God to bring you and me in familiarity, I have
always delighted in your company." He then wanders into religious
reflections, but we see that he liked Mrs. Bowes, and Marjorie Bowes too,
no doubt: he is careful to style the elderly lady "Mother." Knox's
letters to Mrs. Bowes show the patience and courtesy with which the
Reformer could comfort and counsel a middle-aged lady in trouble about
her innocent soul. As she recited her infirmities, he reminds her, he
"started back, and that is my common consuetude when anything pierces or
touches my heart. Call to your mind what I did standing at the cupboard
at Alnwick; in very deed I thought that no creature had been tempted as I
was"--not by the charms of Mrs. Bowes, of course: he found that Satan
troubled the lady with "the very same words that he troubles me with."
Mrs. Bowes, in truth, with premature scepticism, was tempted to think
that "the Scriptures of God are but a tale, and no credit to be given to
them." The Devil, she is reminded by Knox, has induced "some
philosophers to affirm that the world never had a beginning," which he
refutes by showing that God predicted the pains of childbearing; and Mrs.
Bowes, as the mother of twelve, knows how true _this_ is.

The circular argument may or may not have satisfied Mrs. Bowes. {43}

The young object of Knox's passion, Marjorie Bowes, is only alluded to as