far as possible: here the whole transaction was completed
in opposition to the Regent, under the guidance of an aristocracy
engaged in conflict with her, amidst very great tumult, while all that
was ancient was set aside.

At the beginning of July the Scotch lords had become masters of the
capital as well, and had reformed it according to their own views,
with the most lively sympathy of the citizens. They were resolved to
uphold the change of religion now effected, cost what it would, and
hoped to do so in a peaceful manner. When Perth again opened her gates
to the Regent after the first tumult, under the condition that she
should punish no one, she promised at the same time to put off the
adjustment of all questions in dispute to the next Parliament. There
they intended to carry at once the recognition of the Reformation in
its whole breadth, and the removal of the French. We perceive that it
was their plan in that case to obey the Regent as before, and to unite
the abbey-lands to the possessions of the crown. 'But if your Grace
does not agree to this,' so runs the letter of a confederate, 'they
are resolved to reject all union with you.'

It was soon shown that the last was the only alternative. The regent
collected so many French and Scotch troops that the lords did not
venture to stop her return to Edinburgh. They came to an agreement
instead, in which she promised to prosecute no member of the
Congregation, and especially no preacher, and not to allow the clergy
on the ground of their jurisdiction to undertake any annoying
proceedings: in return for which the lords on their side pledged
themselves not to disturb any of the clergy or destroy any more of the
church buildings. It was a truce in which each party, sword in hand,
reserved to itself the power of defending its partisans against the
other. The two parties encountered in Edinburgh. The inhabitants had
called Knox to be their preacher, and when he thought it unsafe to
stay in the city after the Congregation withdrew, another champion of
the Reformation, Willok, filled his place with hardly less zeal and
success. But on the other side the bishop of Amiens appeared with some
doctors of the Sorbonne at the Regent's court. Here and there the
Protestant service was again discarded; the Paris theologians defended
the old dogma among the Scotch scholars, and made even now some
impression; the mass and the preaching contended with each other. As
to the Regent's v