At this moment the eldest son of the house, the Earl of Arran, was in France. As a boy, he had been seized by the murderers of Cardinal Beaton, and held as a hostage in the Castle of St. Andrews. Was he there converted to the Reformers’ ideas by the eloquence of Knox? We know not, but, as heir to his father’s French duchy of Chatelherault, he had been some years in France, commanding the Scottish Archer Guard. In France too, perhaps, he was more or less a pledge for his father’s loyalty in Scotland. He was now a Protestant in earnest, had retired from the French Court, had refused to return thither when summoned, and fled from the troops who were sent to bring him; lurking in woods and living on strawberries. Cecil despatched Thomas Randolph to steer him across the frontier to Zurich. He was a piece in the game much more valuable than his father, whose portrait shows us a weak, feebly cunning, good-natured, and puzzled-looking old nobleman.
Till Arran returned to Scotland, the Hamiltons, it was certain, would be trusty allies of neither faith and of neither party. When the Perth tumult broke out, Lord James rode with the Regent, as did Argyll. But both had signed the godly Band of December 3, 1557, and could no more be trusted by the Regent than the Hamiltons.
Meanwhile, the gentry of Fife and Forfarshire, with the town of Dundee, joined Knox in the walled town of Perth, though Lord Ruthven, provost of Perth, deserted, for the moment, to the Regent. On the other hand, the courageous Glencairn, with a strong body of the zealots of Renfrewshire and Ayrshire, was moving by forced marches to join the brethren. On May 24, the Regent, instead of attacking, halted at Auchterarder, fourteen miles away, and sent Argyll and Lord James to parley. They were told that the brethren meant no rebellion (as the Regent said and doubtless thought that they did), but only desired security for their religion, and were ready to “be tried” (by whom?) “in lawful judgment.” Argyll and Lord James were satisfied. On May 25, Knox harangued the two lords in his wonted way, but the Regent bade the brethren leave Perth on pain of treason. By May 28, however, she heard of Glencairn’s approach with Lord Ochiltree, a Stewart (later Knox’s father-in-law); Glencairn, by cross roads, had arrived within six miles of Perth, with 1200 horse and 1300 foot. The western Reformers were thus nearer Perth than her own untrustworthy levies at Auchterarder. Not being aware of this, the brethren proposed obedience, if the Regent would amnesty the Perth men, let their faith “go forward,” and leave no garrison of “French soldiers.” To Mrs. Locke Knox adds that no idolatry should be erected, or alteration made within the town. [{120}] The Regent was now sending Lord James, Argyll, and Mr. Gawain Hamilton to treat, when Glencairn and his men marched into Perth. Argyll and Lord James then promised to join the brethren, if the Regent broke her agreement; Knox and Willock assured their hearers that break it she would—and so the agreement was accepted (May 28).
It was thus necessary for the brethren to allege that the covenant was broken; and it was not easy for Mary to secure order in Perth without taking some step that could be seized on as a breach of her promise; Argyll and Lord James could then desert her for the party of Knox. The very Band which Argyll and Lord James signed with the Congregation provided that the godly should go on committing the disorders which it was the duty of the Regent to suppress, and they proceeded in that holy course, “breaking down the altars and idols in all places where they came.” [{121a}] “At their whole powers” the Congregations are “to destroy and put away all that does dishonour to God’s name”; that is, monasteries and works of sacred art. They are all to defend each other against “any power whatsoever” that shall trouble them in their pious work. Argyll and Lord James signed this new Band, with Glencairn, Lord Boyd, and Ochiltree. The Queen’s emissaries thus deserted her cause on the last day of May 1559, or earlier, for the chronology is perplexing. [{121b}]
As to the terms of truce with the Regent, Knox gives no document, but says that no Perth people should be troubled for their recent destruction of idolatry “and for down casting the places of the same; that she would suffer the religion begun to go forward, and leave the town at her departing free from the garrisons of French soldiers.” The “Historie” mentions no terms except that “she should leave no men of war behind her.”
Thus, as it seems, the brethren by their Band were to go on wrecking the homes of the Regent’s religion, while she was not to enjoy her religious privileges in the desecrated churches of Perth, for to do that was to prevent “the religion begun” from “going forward.” On the Regent’s entry her men “discharged their volley of hackbuts,” probably to clear their pieces, a method of unloading which prevailed as late as Waterloo. But some aimed, says Knox, at the house of Patrick Murray and hit a son of his, a boy of ten or twelve, “who, being slain, was had to the Queen’s presence.” She mocked, and wished it had been his father, “but seeing that it so chanced, we cannot be against fortune.” It is not very probable that Mary of Guise was “merry,” in Knox’s manner of mirth, over the death of a child (to Mrs. Locke Knox says “children”), who, for all we know, may have been the victim of accident, like the Jacobite lady who was wounded at a window as Prince Charles’s men discharged their pieces when entering Edinburgh after the victory of Prestonpans. (This brave lady said that it was fortunate she was not a Whig, or the accident would have been ascribed to design.) This event at Perth was called a breach of terms, so was the attendance at Mass, celebrated on any chance table, as “the altars were not so easy to be repaired again.” The soldiers were billeted on citizens, whose houses were “oppressed by” the Frenchmen, and the provost, Ruthven (who had anew deserted to the Congregation), and the bailies, were deposed.
These magistrates probably had been charged with the execution of priests who dared to do their duty; at least in the following year, on June 10, 1560, we find the provost, bailies, and town council of Edinburgh decreeing death for the third offence against idolaters who do not instantly profess their conversion. [{122}] The Edinburgh municipality did this before the abolition of Catholicism by the Convention of Estates in August 1560. It does not appear that any authority in Perth except that of the provost and bailies could sentence priests to death; was their removal, then, a breach of truce? At all events it seemed necessary in the circumstances, and Mary of Guise when she departed left no French soldiers to protect the threatened priests, but four companies of Scots who had been in French service, under Stewart of Cardonell and Captain Cullen, the Captain of Queen Mary’s guard after the murder of Riccio. The Regent is said by Knox to have remarked that she was not bound to keep faith with heretics, and that, with as fair an excuse, she would make little scruple to take the lives and goods of “all that sort.” We do not know Knox’s authority for these observations of the Regent.
The Scots soldiers left by Mary of Guise may have been Protestants, they certainly were not Frenchmen; and, in a town where death had just been threatened to all priests who celebrated the Mass, Mary could not abandon her clerics unprotected.
Taking advantage of what they called breach of treaty as regards the soldiers left in Perth, Lord James and Argyll, with Ruthven, had joined the brethren, accompanied by the Earl of Menteith and Murray of Tullibardine, ancestor of the ducal house of Atholl. Argyll and Lord James went to St. Andrews, summoning their allies thither for June 3. Knox meanwhile preached in Crail and Anstruther, with the usual results. On Sunday, June 11, [{123a}] and for three days more, despising the threats of the Archbishop, backed by a hundred spears, and referring to his own prophecy made when he was in the galleys, he thundered at St. Andrews. The poor ruins of some sacred buildings “are alive to testify” to the consequences, and a head of the Redeemer found in the latrines of the abbey is another mute witness to the destruction of that day. [{123b}]
It is not my purpose to dilate on the universal destruction of so much that was beautiful, and that to Scots, however godly, should have been sacred. The tomb of the Bruce in Dunfermline, for example, was wrecked by the mob, as the statue of Jeanne d’Arc on the bridge of Orleans was battered to pieces by the Huguenots. Nor need we ask what became of church treasures, perhaps of great value and antiquity. In some known cases, the magistrates held and sold those of the town churches. Some of the plate and vestments at Aberdeen were committed to the charge of Huntly, but about 1900 ounces of plate were divided among the Prebendaries, who seem to have appropriated them. [{124}] The Church treasures of Glasgow were apparently carried abroad by Archbishop Beaton. If Lord James, as Prior, took possession of the gold and silver of St. Andrews, he probably used the bullion (he spent some 13,000 crowns) in his defence of the approaches to the town, against the French, in December 1559. A silver mace of St. Salvator’s College escaped the robbers.