de or provocation given.
The Congregation takes at once the highest tone. They declare that,
faithful servants of the realm as they have always been, if this unjust
tyranny is carried out they will be constrained to take up the sword of
just defence, notifying at the same time their innocence not only to
"the King of France, to our Mistress and to her husband, but also to the
Princes and Council of everie Christian realm, declaring unto them that
this cruel, unjust, and most tyrannical murther intended against towns
and multitudes, was and is the only cause of our revolt from our
accustomed obedience." Thus they treat the threatened attack throughout
as wholly directed against their religion and religious freedom, without
the least reference to the just cause of offence given by riots so
alarming and destructive, and by the ruin of a national monument so
important as the Charterhouse. All these are as completely ignored as if
the population of St. Johnstone had been the most tranquil and
law-abiding in the world. And they do this with such evident good faith
that it is impossible not to believe that what had happened was to
themselves an unimportant incident: though it was something like what
the destruction of Westminster Abbey would have been in England. In
these respects, however, the state of feeling produced by the
Reformation followed no ordinary laws; the fervour of hatred and
contempt which the priesthood called forth in Scotland being beyond all
example or comparison, except, indeed, in some parts of France, where
Farel and his followers had set the example of destruction.

The Queen, however, did little more than threaten. Before she could move
at all, the Westland lords, who had gone home, had heard the news and
turned back in hot haste to succour their brethren. Even without that
reinforcement the French general had hesitated to approach too near the
town occupied by so many resolute men, no longer "peaceable," but
determined to defend themselves. It is very apparent that Mary wished
above all things to avoid bloodshed and any step which would precipitate
the beginning of a civil war: and she sent embassy after embassy,
selected sometimes from her own side, sometimes from that of the
Reformers, to exhort them to submission. If her part in the matter was
that of an anxious and in many ways considerate ruler, bent, so far as
in her lay, upon keeping the peace, the attitude of the Congregation
was, at the same