Knox had been invited by the Earl of Glencairn, the Lords Erskine and Lorn, and James Stewart (afterwards the Earl of Moray), to return to Scotland in 1557.[303] He reached Dieppe in October, and found letters awaiting him which told him that the times were not ripe. The answer he sent spurred the Reforming lords to constitute the _Band_ of December 1557. It was while he was at Dieppe, chafing at the news he had received, that he composed the violent treatise, entitled _The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_[304]--a book which did more to hamper his future than anything else. The state of things was exasperating to a man who longed to be at work in Scotland or England. "Bloody" Mary in England was hounding on her officials to burn Knox's co-religionists, and the Reformation, which had made so much progress under Edward VI., seemed to be entirely overthrown; while Mary of Guise, the Queen Mother and Regent in Scotland, was inciting the unwilling Archbishop of St. Andrews to make use of his legatine and episcopal powers to repress the believers of his native land. But as chance would have it, Mary Tudor was dead before the pamphlet was widely known, and the Queen whom of all others he desired to conciliate was seated on the throne of England, and had made William Cecil, the staunchest of Protestants, her Secretary of State. She could scarcely avoid believing that the _Blast_ was meant for her; and, even if not, it was based on such general principles that it might prove dangerous to one whose throne was still insecure. It is scarcely to be wondered at that the Queen never forgave the vehement writer, and that the _Blast_ was a continual obstacle to a complete understanding between the Scottish Reformer and his English allies.[305] If Knox would never confess publicly to queens, whether to Elizabeth Tudor or to Mary Stuart; that he had done wrong, he was ready to say to a friend whom he loved:
"My rude vehemencie and inconsidered affirmations, which may rather appear to procead from coler then of zeal and reason, I do not excuse."[306]
It was the worse for Knox and for Scotland, for the reign of women had begun. Charles V., Francis I., and Henry VIII. had passed away, and the destinies of Europe were to be in the hands of Elizabeth, Catherine de' Medici, Mary Stuart, and Philip of Spain, the most felinely feminine of the four.
