of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox." He surpassed
Cromwell and Burghley in integrity of purpose and in purity of methods. He
towered above the Regent Murray in intellect, and he worked on a larger
scale than Latimer. "His was the voice that taught the peasant of the
Lothians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with the
proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his forefathers. He was the
one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften nor Maitland deceive. He
it was who had raised the poor commons of his country into a stern and
rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, superstitious, and fanatical, but
who nevertheless were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest could force
again to submit to tyranny." Yet even here, Froude could not refrain from
quoting the sardonic comment of the English ambassador at Edinburgh: Knox
behaved, said Randolph, "as though he were of God's privy council."

It is certain, at least, that other reformers, who were not greatly
inferior to Knox in capacity, and not at all in piety and honesty, have not
met the same generous treatment at his hands. He sneers at Hooper because
he had scruples about wearing episcopal robes at his consecration as Bishop
of Worcester, though he himself in a famous passage asserts the anomalous
position of bishops in the Church of England. Hooper, as a Calvinist, was
in the right in objecting, and though the point upon which he took his
stand was nominally one of form, there lay behind it a protest against the
Anglican conception of a bishop. He speaks slightingly of Ridley and
Ferrars, though he makes ample amends to them and to Hooper, when he comes
to describe the manner of their death. To the reformers who fled from the
Marian persecution, including men like Jewel and Grindal, he refers with
scornful contempt, though he has no word of criticism to apply to Knox for
retiring to England and to the continent when the flame of persecution was
certainly not more fierce. Latimer is one of his favourites,--a plain,
practical man, not given to abstract speculation or theological subtleties,