Bowes," and a passport is got for her, her man, a maid, and
"three horses, whereof two shall return," as well as liberty
to take all her own money with her into Scotland. This looks
like a definite arrangement; but whether she died at
Edinburgh, or went back to England yet again, I cannot find.
With that great family of hers, unless in leaving her husband
she had quarrelled with them all, there must have been
frequent occasion for her presence, one would think. Knox at
least survived her; and we possess his epigraph to their long
intimacy, given to the world by him in an appendix to his
latest publication. I have said in a former paper that Knox
was not shy of personal revelations in his published works.
And the trick seems to have grown on him. To this last
tract, a controversial onslaught on a Scottish Jesuit, he
prefixed a prayer, not very pertinent to the matter in hand,
and containing references to his family which were the
occasion of some wit in his adversary's answer; and appended
what seems equally irrelevant, one of his devout letters to
Mrs. Bowes, with an explanatory preface. To say truth, I
believe he had always felt uneasily that the circumstances of
this intimacy were very capable of misconstruction; and now,
when he was an old man, taking "his good night of all the
faithful in both realms," and only desirous "that without any
notable sclander to the evangel of Jesus Christ, he might end
his battle; for as the world was weary of him, so was he of
it;" - in such a spirit it was not, perhaps, unnatural that
he should return to this old story, and seek to put it right
in the eyes of all men, ere he died.
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