rity in openly soliciting subscriptions to their league; and
the death of Mary of England, with the accession of Elizabeth, which
happened about this time, contributed to increase their hopes of final
success in their undertaking. They ventured to present a petition to
the regent, craving a reformation of the church, and of the "wicked,
scandalous, and detestable" lives of the prelates and ecclesiastics.[*]
They framed a petition which they intended to present to parliament,
and in which, after premising that they could not communicate with the
damnable idolatry and intolerable abuses of the Papistical church, they
desired that the laws against heretics should be executed by the civil
magistrate alone, and that the Scripture should be the sole rule
in judging of heresy.[**] They even petitioned the convocation, and
insisted that prayers should be said in the vulgar tongue, and that
bishops should be chosen with the consent of the gentry of the diocese,
and priests with the consent of the parishioners.[***] The regent
prudently temporized between these parties; and as she aimed at
procuring a matrimonial crown for her son-in-law the dauphin, she was,
on that as well as other accounts, unwilling to come to extremities with
either of them.

* Knox, p. 121.

** Knox, p. 123.

*** Keith, p. 78, 81, 82.

But after this concession was obtained, she received orders from France,
probably dictated by the violent spirit of her brothers, to proceed with
rigor against the reformers, and to restore the royal authority by some
signal act of power.[*] She made the more eminent of the Protestant
teachers be cited to appear before the council at Stirling; but when
their followers were marching thither in great multitudes, in order
to protect and countenance them, she entertained apprehensions of an
insurrection, and, it is said, dissipated the people by a promise[**]
[2] that nothing should be done to the prejudice of the ministers.
Sentence, however, was passed, by which all the ministers were
pronounced rebels, on account of their not appearing; a measure which
enraged the people, and made them resolve to oppose the regent's
authority by force of arms, and to proceed to extremities against the
clergy of the established religion.

In this critical time, John Knox arrived from Geneva, where he had
passed some years in banishment, and where he had imbibed, from his
commerce with Calvin, the highest fanaticism of his s