an interposition in the direction of lenity, and stayed
away; but without regard to this and without delay the Justiciary at
Stirling, Henry Levingstoune, proceeded to business on the day
appointed, 20 May 1559. As the preachers did not appear, those who had
become security for them were condemned to a money-fine, while they
themselves were denounced as rebels,[199] as having withdrawn
themselves from the royal jurisdiction; an edict followed which
pronounced them exiled, and in the severest terms forbade any to give
them protection or favour.

The news fell like a spark of fire among the inflammable masses of
Protestants assembled at Perth. The sentence promulgated was an open
act of hostility against the lords, who felt themselves bound by their
word which they had given to the preachers and by their vow to each
other. They considered that the Regent's promise had given them a
right against her; Lord Erskine, whom the others had warned, declared
that he had been deceived by her. While the Regent had prevented a
collision between the two parties at Stirling, she had occasioned in
one of them, at Perth, the outbreak of a popular storm against the
hierarchy of the land, their representatives, and the monuments of
their religion. John Knox, who had come, as he said, to be where men
were striving against Satan, called on them in a fiery sermon to
destroy the images which were the instruments of idolatry. The attempt
of a priest, after the sermon, to proceed to high mass and open the
tabernacle of the altar, was all that was needed to cause a tumult
even in the church itself, in which the images of the saints were
destroyed; and the outbreak spreading through the city directed itself
against the monasteries and laid them too in ruins. How entirely
different is Knox from Luther! The German reformer made all outward
change depend on the gradual influence of doctrine, and did not wish
to set himself in rebellious opposition to the public order under
which he lived. The Scot called on men to destroy whatever contravened
his religious ideas. The Lords of the Congregation, who became ever
more numerous, declared themselves resolved to do all that God
commands in Scripture, and destroy all that tended to dishonour his
name. With these objects, and with their co-operation and connivance,
the stormy movement once raised surged everywhere further over the
country. The monasteries were also destroyed in Stirling, Glasgow, and
S. Andr