his return. [Sidenote: 1558] Before
doing so he published his "Appellation" [Sidenote: May 2, 1559] to the
nobles, estates and commonalty against the sentence of death recently
passed on him. When he did arrive in Edinburgh, his preaching was like
a match set to kindling wood. Wherever he went burst forth the flame
of iconoclasm. Images were broken and monasteries stormed not, as he
himself wrote, by gentlemen or by "earnest professors of Christ," but
by "the rascal multitude." In reckoning the forces of revolution, the
joy of the mob in looting must not be forgotten. [Sidenote: May 11]
From Perth Knox wrote: "The places of idolatry were made equal with the
ground; all monuments of idolatry that could be apprehended, consumed
with fire; and priests commanded, under pain of death, to desist from
their blasphemous mass." Similar outbursts occurred at St. Andrews,
and when Knox returned to Edinburgh, civil war seemed imminent.
Pamphlets of the time, like _The Beggars' Warning_, [Sidenote: 1559]
distinctly made the threat of social revolution.

{361} But as a matter of fact the change came as the most bloodless in
Europe. The Reformers, popular with the middle and with part of the
upper classes, needed only to win English support to make themselves
perfectly secure. The difficulty in this course lay in Queen
Elizabeth's natural dislike of Knox on account of his _First Blast of
the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_. In this
war-whoop, aimed against the Marys of England and Scotland, Knox had
argued that "to promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or
empire above any realm is repugnant to nature, contrary to God, and,
finally, it is the subversion of good order and of all equity and
justice." The author felt not a little embarrassment when a Protestant
woman ascended the throne of England and he needed her help. But to
save his soul he "that never feared nor flattered any flesh" could not
admit that he was in the wrong, nor take back aught that he had said.
He seems to have acted on Barry Lyndon's maxim that "a gentleman fights
but never apologizes." When he wrote Elizabeth, [Sidenote: July 20,
1559] all he would say was that he was not her enemy and had never
offended her or her realm maliciously or of purpose. He seasoned this
attempt at reconciliation by adding a stinging rebuke to the proud
young queen for having "declined from God and bowed to idolatry,"
during her sister's reign