Stuart dynasty

THE CHURCH AT BAY. 141
came to the throne, the young couple soon to become
sovereigns of France found themselves face to i'ace
with a difficult political situation.
On the other hand, throughout Scotland the re-
formed doctrines gained ground speedily, in spite of
divers prosecutions for heresy, and the burning of
Walter Mill at eighty years of age, which disgraced
that same year, 1558.
How it came to pass that hands were not laid on
John Knox himself one wonders when perusing the
histories of the time ; but the eloquent zealot went on
defying the Regent, Mary of Lorraine, in his own
rough way, until in 1559, after a sermon at Perth,
the crowd rose against the priests and destroyed the
famous Carthusian monastery there, as well as that
of the Black Friars, where James I. had been enter-
tained before being so cruelly murdered. These
disturbances were soon repeated on the same scale at
St. Andrews. John Knox urges that these acts were
those " of the rascal multitude," but in the inflamed
state of the public mind no other result would be
likely to follow exciting, not to say iconoclastic,
preaching such as his.*
Before leaving Perth for Edinburgh, the Calvinist
Lords of the Congregation, animated as before by
Knox, sacked the Abbey and Palace of Scone, with
its monarchical monuments, and passing by Stirling,
wrecked its monasteries, a fate which overtook
kindred institutions in the romantic capital itself.
A graphic description of these events will be found
* Knox's ' History,' p. 128.