rance
(and, alas! also the uniformity) of religion in both kingdoms. But that
public, and this private, league were alike disavowed by the Sovereign,
and both became the badge of rebellion. The Queen Regent, indeed, had
now fortified Leith, and was filling it with French soldiers. The Lords
of the Congregation, founding on this as a breach of faith, resolved to
suspend her from the regency, and did so by a proclamation, strangely
signed: 'By us, the nobility and commons of the Protestants of the
Church of Scotland.' The preachers approved, Knox, however, demanding
that a door be still kept open for her restoration. War, of course, at
once followed, and it turned out to be very much a fight between
Edinburgh and Leith, then not unequally matched.[79] Soon the
Protestants got the worst of it. On the last day of October the French,
pouring up Leith Walk, drove them back into the Canongate, attacked
Leith Wynd, and sent their horsemen in headlong flight through the
Netherbow Port and up the High Street. Five days after, the forces of
the Congregation having advanced to Restalrig, were enclosed by two
advancing bodies of the enemy, and so jammed in near Holyrood, between
the crags of the Calton on the one side and the crags of Arthur Seat on
the other, as to be extricated only with most serious loss. Confusion
and dismay seized upon all, and at midnight they marched out of
Edinburgh, pursued by voices of reproach and execration from the
overhanging roofs. Next night they gathered helplessly at Stirling. But
on the following day Knox entered the pulpit there, and preached a
memorable sermon. It recalled the despairing Congregation to a mood of
resolute trust and hope. And yet his text was the Psalm which tells of
the vine brought from Egypt to be planted in the land, but now wasted
and broken down; and the preacher throughout refused even to suggest to
the shrinking multitude any lower hope than the vouchsafed shining again
of the Divine countenance. There remains only, he concluded,

'that we turn to the Eternal our God, who beats down to death,
to the intent that he may raise up again, to leave the
remembrance of his wondrous deliverance, to the praise of his
own name ... yea, whatsoever shall become of us and of our
mortal carcases, I doubt not but that this cause, in despite of
Satan, shall prevail in the realm of Scotland.'

But his words were as life from the dead, and the sermon, which Buchanan