. . .na_45" id="fna_45" href="#f_45">[45] But on February 5 Randolph had written to Cecil that Mary ‘hath said openly that she will have mass free for all men that will hear it,’ and that Darnley, Lennox, and Atholl daily resort to it. ‘The Protestants are in great fear and doubt what shall become of them. The wisest so much dislike this state and government, that they design nothing more than the return of the Lords, either to be put into their own rooms, or once again to put all in hazard.’[46] ‘The wisest’ is a phrase apt[Pg 66] to mean Lethington. Now, on February 9, before Darnley’s motion to Ruthven, Lethington wrote to Cecil: ‘Mary! I see no certain way unless we chop at the very root; you know where it lieth.’[47] When Mary, later, was a prisoner in England, Knox, writing to Cecil, used this very phrase, ‘If ye strike not at the root, the branches that appear to be broken will bud again’ (Jan. 2, 1570). . . Read More