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settling the distracted affairs of the country, and to attend a general convention of the delegates of the Churches, to be held on the 20th of July following. He was unsuccessful in this negotiation. But the convention was held, and the nobles, barons, and other commissioners, who were present, subscribed a number of articles, with reference to religion and the state of the nation. On the 29th of July, the Reformer preached the sermon at the coronation of King James VI. in the parish church of Stirling. He objected to the ceremony of unction, as a Jewish rite, abused under the papacy; but it was deemed inexpedient to depart from the accustomed ceremonial on the present occasion. It was therefore performed by the Bishop of Orkney, the superintendents of Lothian and Angus assisting him to place the crown on the King’s head. After the coronation, Knox, along with some others, took instruments, and craved extracts of the proceedings. When the Queen was confined by the lords in the castle of Loch Leven, they had not resolved in what manner they should dispose of her person for the future. Some proposed that she should be allowed to leave the kingdom; some that she should be imprisoned during life; while others insisted that she ought to suffer capital punishment. Of this last opinion was Knox, with almost all the ministers, and the great body of the people. The chief ground upon which they insisted for this, was not her maladministration in the government, or the mere safety and peace of the commonwealth; which were the reasons upon which the Parliament of England, in the following century, proceeded to the execution of her grandson. But they grounded their opinion upon the personal crimes with which Mary was charged. Murder and adultery, they reasoned, were crimes to which the punishment of death was allotted by the law of God, and of nations. From this penalty persons of no rank could plead exemption. The ordinary forms of judicial procedure, indeed, made no provision for the trial of a supreme magistrate for these crimes; because the laws did not suppose that such enormous offenses would be committed by them. But extraordinary cases required extraordinary remedies; and new offenses gave birth to new laws. There were examples in Scripture of the capital punishment of princes, and precedents for it in the history of their own Country. http://www.servantofmessiah.org