men of the country
that gave an opportunity to the lords who were combined for the
support of religion to advance with increasing resolution. Among their
proposals there is none weightier than that which they laid before her
in March 1559, just when the Regent had gathered around her a numerous
ecclesiastical assembly. They demanded that the bishops should be
elected for the future by the nobility and gentry of each diocese, the
parish clergy by the parishioners, and only those were to be elected
who were of esteemed life and possessed the requisite capacity: divine
service was to be henceforth held in the language of the country. The
assembled clergy rejected both demands. They remarked that to set
aside the influence of the crown on the elections involved a
diminution of its authority which could not be defended, especially
during the minority of the sovereign. Only in the customary forms
would they allow of any amendments.

But this assembly was not content with rejecting the proposals: they
confirmed the usages and services stigmatised by their opponents as
superstitious, and forbade the celebration of the sacraments in any
other form than that sanctioned by the Church. The royal court at
Stirling called a number of preachers to its bar for unauthorised
assumption of priestly functions.

The preachers were ready to come: the lords in whose houses they
sojourned were security for them. And already they had the popular
sympathy as well as aristocratic protection. It was an old custom of
the country that, in especially important judicial proceedings, the
accused appeared accompanied by his friends. Now therefore the friends
of the Reformation assembled in great numbers at Perth from the
Mearns, Dundee, and Angus, that, by jointly avowing the doctrines on
account of which their spiritual leaders were called to account, their
condemnation might be rendered impossible.

As to the Regent we are assured that she was not in general firmer in
her leaning towards the hierarchy than other Princes of the time, and
had once even entertained the thought that the supreme ecclesiastical
power belonged to her;[197] but, perhaps alarmed by the vehemence of
the preachers, she had done nothing to obtain such a power. It now
appeared to her that it would be a good plan to check the flow of the
masses to the place of trial by some friendly words which she
addressed to Erskine of Dun.[198] The Protestants saw in them the
assurance of