"First. That, albeit magistrates be God's ordinance, having power and authority from Him, their power is not so largely extended, but that it is bounded and limited by God in His Word.
"Secondarily. That, as subjects are commanded to obey their magistrates, so are magistrates commanded to fulfil their duty to the subjects, as God by His Word has prescribed the office of the one and of the other.
"Thirdly. That, albeit God has appointed magistrates to be His Lieutenants on earth, and has honoured them with His own title, calling them gods, He did never so establish any, but that for just causes they might be deprived.
"Fourthly. That, in deposing Princes and those in authority, God did not always use His immediate power; but sometimes He used other means which His wisdom thought good, and justice approved. By Asa He had removed Maachah, his own mother, from the honour and authority which she had brooked;[144] by Jehu He had destroyed Joram and the whole posterity of Ahab; and by divers others He had deposed from authority those whom previously He had established by His own Word.
"The Queen Regent had denied her chief duty to the subjects of this realm, which was to minister justice unto them indifferently, to preserve their liberties from invasion by strangers, and to suffer them to have God's Word freely and openly preached amongst them. Moreover, she was an open and obstinate idolatress, a vehement maintainer of all superstition and idolatry; and, finally, she had utterly despised the counsel and requests of the nobility. Upon these grounds he argued that there was no reason why they, the born counsellors, nobility, and barons of the realm, might not justly deprive her from all regiment and authority amongst them."...
The individual vote of every man being required, and every man commanded to speak what his conscience judged in that matter, as he would answer to God, there was none found amongst the whole number who did not, by his own tongue, consent to her deprivation....
After our Act of Suspension was by sound of trumpet divulged at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, we dismissed the herald with his answer, and on the following day we summoned the town of Leith by the sound of trumpet, requiring, in name of the King and Queen and of the Council then in Edinburgh, that all Scots and French men,[145] of whatsoever estate and degree they should be, to depart from the town of Leith within the space of twelve hours, and "make the same patent to all and sundry our Sovereign Lady's lieges."...
The Siege of Leith is commenced: Traitors hinder the Protestants.
Defiance given, there was skirmishing, without great slaughter. Preparation of scaills[146] and ladders was made for the assault, which had been agreed upon by common consent of the nobility and barons. The scaills were appointed to be made in St. Giles's Church, and preaching was neglected. This not a little grieved the preachers, and many godly persons.... The Queen had amongst us her assured spies, who did not only signify unto her what was our state, but also what were our counsel, purposes, and devices. Some of our own company were vehemently suspected to be the very betrayers of all our secrets. A boy of the Official of Lothian, Master James Balfour, was caught carrying a writing which disclosed the most secret thing that was devised in the Council; yea, these very things which were thought only to have been known to a very few.