For July 28 [{87b}] four or five of the brethren were summoned to “a day of law,” in Edinburgh; their allies assembled to back them, and they were released on bail to appear, if called on, within eight days. At this time the “idol” of St. Giles, patron of the city, was stolen, and a great riot occurred at the saint’s fête, September 3. [{87c}]
Knox describes the discomfiture of his foes in one of his merriest passages, frequently cited by admirers of “his vein of humour.” The event, we know, was at once reported to him in Geneva, by letter.
Some time after October, if we rightly construe Knox, [{88a}] a petition was delivered to the Regent, from the Reformers, by Sandilands of Calder. [{88b}] They asserted that they should have defended the preachers, or testified with them. The wisdom of the Regent herself sees the need of reform, spiritual and temporal, and has exhorted the clergy and nobles to employ care and diligence thereon, a fact corroborated by Mary of Guise herself, in a paper, soon to be quoted, of July 1559. [{88c}] They ask, as they have the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular, for common prayers in the same. They wish for freedom to interpret and discuss the Bible “in our conventions,” and that Baptism and the Communion may be done in Scots, and they demand the reform of the detestable lives of the prelates. [{88d}]
Knox’s account, in places, appears really to refer to the period of the Provincial Council of March 1559, though it does not quite fit that date either.
The Regent is said on the occasion of Calder’s petition, and after the unsatisfactory replies of the clergy (apparently at the Provincial Council, March 1559), to have made certain concessions, till Parliament established uniform order. But the Parliament was of November-December 1558. [{89a}] Before that Parliament, at all events (which was mainly concerned with procuring the “Crown Matrimonial” for the Dauphin, husband of Mary Stuart), the brethren offered a petition, in the first place shown to the Regent, asking for (1) the suspension of persecuting laws till after a General Council has “decided all controversies in religion”—that is, till the Greek Calends. (2) That prelates shall not be judges in cases of heresy, but only accusers before secular tribunals. (3) That all lawful defences be granted to persons accused. (4) That the accused be permitted to explain “his own mind and meaning.” (5) That “none be condemned for heretics unless by the manifest Word of God they be convicted to have erred from the faith which the Holy Spirit witnesses to be necessary to salvation.” According to Knox this petition the Regent put in her pocket, saying that the Churchmen would oppose it, and thwart her plan for getting the “Crown Matrimonial” given to her son-in-law, Francis II., and, in short, gave good words, and drove time. [{89b}]
The Reformers then drew up a long Protestation, which was read in the House, but not enrolled in its records. They say that they have had to postpone a formal demand for Reformation, but protest that “it be lawful to us to use ourselves in matters of religion and conscience as we must answer to God,” and they are ready to prove their case. They shall not be liable, meanwhile, to any penalties for breach of the existing Acts against heresy, “nor for violating such rites as man, without God’s commandment or word, hath commanded.” They disclaim all responsibility for the ensuing tumults. [{90a}] In fact, they aver that they will not only worship in their own way, but prevent other people from worshipping in the legal way, and that the responsibility for the riots will lie on the side of those who worship legally. And this was the chief occasion of the ensuing troubles. The Regent promised to “put good order” in controverted matters, and was praised by the brethren in a letter to Calvin, not now to be found.
Another threat had been made by the brethren, in circumstances not very obscure. As far as they are known they suggest that in January 1559 the zealots deliberately intended to provoke a conflict, and to enlist “the rascal multitude” on their side, at Easter, 1559. The obscurity is caused by a bookbinder. He has, with the fatal ingenuity of his trade, cut off the two top lines from a page in one manuscript copy of Knox’s “History.” [{90b}] The text now runs thus (in its mutilated condition): “ . . . Zealous Brether . . . upon the gates and posts of all the Friars’ places within this realm, in the month of January 1558 (1559), preceding that Whitsunday that they dislodged, which is this . . . ”
Then follows the Proclamation.
Probably we may supply the words: “. . . Zealous Brethren caused a paper to be affixed upon the gates and posts,” and so on. The paper so promulgated purported to be a warning from the poor of Scotland that, before Whitsunday, “we, the lawful proprietors,” will eject the Friars and residents on the property, unlawfully withheld by the religious—“our patrimony.” This feat will be performed, “with the help of God, and assistance of his Saints on earth, of whose ready support we doubt not.”
As the Saints, in fact, were the “Zealous Brether . . .” who affixed the written menace on “all the Friars’ places,” they knew what they were talking about, and could prophesy safely. To make so many copies of the document, and fix them on “all the Friars’ places,” implies organisation, and a deliberate plan—riots and revolution—before Whitsunday. The poor, of course, only exchanged better for worse landlords, as they soon discovered. The “Zealous Brethren”—as a rule small lairds, probably, and burgesses—were the nucleus of the Revolution. When townsfolk and yeomen in sufficient number had joined them in arms, then nobles like Argyll, Lord James, Glencairn, Ruthven, and the rest, put themselves at the head of the movement, and won the prizes which had been offered to the “blind, crooked, widows, orphans, and all other poor.”