' God knows I did use no rhetoric nor coloured speech;
but would have spoken the truth, and that in most simple
manner. I am not a good orator in my own cause; but what he
would not be content to hear of me, God shall declare to him
one day to his displeasure, unless he repent." (5) Poor
Knox, you see, is quite commoved. It has been a very
unpleasant interview. And as it is the only sample that we
have of how things went with him during his courtship, we may
infer that the period was not as agreeable for Knox as it has
been for some others.
(1) IB. iii. 378.
(2) LB. ii. 379.
(3) Works, iii. 394.
(4) Works, iii. 376.
(5) Works, iii. 378.
However, when once they were married, I imagine he and
Marjorie Bowes hit it off together comfortably enough. The
little we know of it may be brought together in a very short
space. She bore him two sons. He seems to have kept her
pretty busy, and depended on her to some degree in his work;
so that when she fell ill, his papers got at once into
disorder. (1) Certainly she sometimes wrote to his
dictation; and, in this capacity, he calls her "his left
hand." (2) In June 1559, at the headiest moment of the
Reformation in Scotland, he writes regretting the absence of
his helpful colleague, Goodman, "whose presence" (this is the
not very grammatical form of his lament) "whose presence I
more thirst, than she that is my own flesh.
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