her to persecute at this time came from the Guises before the Regent had issued her proclamations of February 9 and March 23, {94a} denouncing attacks on priests, disturbance of services, administering of sacraments by lay preachers, and tumults at large.  Now, Sir James Melville of Halhill, the diplomatist, writing in old age, and often erroneously, makes the Cardinal of Lorraine send de Bettencourt, or Bethencourt, to the Regent with news of the peace of Cateau Cambresis and an order to punish heretics with fire and sword, and says that, though she was reluctant, she consequently published her proclamation of March 23.  Dates prove part of this to be impossible. {94b}

Obviously the Regent had issued her proclamations of February-March 1559 in anticipation of the tumults threatened by the Reformers in their “Beggar’s Warning” and in their Protestation of December, and arranged to occur with violence at Easter, as they did.  The three or four preachers (two of them apparently “at the horn” in 1558) were to preach publicly, and riots were certain to ensue, as the Reformers had threatened.  Riots were part of the evangelical programme.  Of Paul Methuen, who first “reformed” the Church in Dundee, Pitscottie writes that he “ministered the sacraments of the communion at Dundee and Cupar, and caused the images thereof to be cast down, and abolished the Pope’s religion so far as he passed or preached.”  For this sort of action he was now summoned. {95a}

The Regent, therefore, warned in her proclamations men, often challenged previously, and as often allowed, under fear of armed resistance, to escape.  All that followed was but a repetition of the feeble policy of outlawing these four or five men.  Finally, in May 1559, these preachers had a strong armed backing, and seized a central strategic point, so the Revolution blazed out on a question which had long been smouldering and on an occasion that had been again and again deferred.  The Regent, far from having foreseen and hardened her heart to carry out an organised persecution and “cut the throats” of all Protestants in Scotland, was, in fact, intending to go to France, being in the earlier stages of her fatal malady.  This appears from a letter of Sir Henry Percy, from Norham Castle, to Cecil and Parry (April 12, 1559) {95b} Percy says that the news in his latest letters (now lost) was erroneous.  The Regent, in fact, “is not as yet departed.”  She is very ill, and her life is despaired of.  She is at Stirling, where the nobles had assembled to discuss religious matters.  Only her French advisers were on the side of the Regent.  “The matter is pacified for the time,” and in case of the Regent’s death, Chatelherault, d’Oysel, and de Rubay are to be a provisional committee of Government, till the wishes of the King and Queen, Francis and Mary, are known.  Again, in her letter of May 16 to Henri II. of France, she stated that she was in very bad health, {96a} and, at about the same date (May 18), the English ambassador in France mentions her intention to visit that country at once. {96b} But the Revolution of May 11, breaking out in Perth, condemned her to suffer and die in Scotland.