[Mary Stewart's arrival in Scotland on 19 August 1561 prompted Knox to preach a series of sermons inveighing against the queen's idolatry and the reintroduction of the mass to the very heart of the realm. As a result, on Thursday 4 September, he was summoned to the queen's presence for the first of several personal ‘reasonings’ or interviews. The following extract from the History (Laing MS, fos. 305r–308r; Laing, vol. II, pp. 277–86; Dickinson, vol. II, pp. 13–20) is Knox's own summary of a long interview ‘whereof we only touch a part’.]

The first reasoning betweixt the Queen and John Knox

Whether it was by counsel of others, or of the Queen's own desire, we know not; but the Queen spake with John Knox, and had long reasoning with him, none being present except the Lord James (two gentlewomen stood in the other end of the house). The sum of their reasoning was this. The Queen accused him that he had raised a part of her subjects against her mother, and against herself; that he had written a book against her just authority (she meant the treatise against the Regiment of Women), which she had, and should cause the most learned in Europe to write against it; that he was the cause of great sedition and great slaughter in England; and that it was said to her that all which he did was by necromancy, etc.