NOTE.

It is far from my purpose to represent Mary of Guise as a kind of stainless Una with a milk-white lamb.  I am apt to believe that she caused to be forged a letter, which she attributed to Arran.  See my ‘John Knox and the Reformation,’ pp. 280, 281, where the evidence is discussed.  But the critical student of Knox’s chapters on these events, generally accepted as historical evidence, cannot but perceive his personal hatred of Mary of Guise, whether shown in thinly veiled hints that Cardinal Beaton was her paramour; or in charges of treacherous breach of promise, which rest primarily on his word.  Again, that “the Brethren” wrecked the religious houses of Perth is what he reports to a lady, Mrs Locke; that “the rascal multitude” was guilty is the tale he tells “to all Europe” in his History.  I have done my best to compare Knox’s stories with contemporary documents, including his own letters.  These documents throw a lurid light on his versions of events, as given in this part of his History, which is merely a partisan pamphlet of autumn 1559.  The evidence is criticised in my ’John Knox and the Reformation,’ pp. 107-157 (1905).  Unhappily the letter of Mary of Guise to Henri II., after the outbreak at Perth, is missing from the archives of France.

CHAPTER XIX.  THE GREAT PILLAGE.

The revolution was now under weigh, and as it had begun so it continued.  There was practically no resistance by the Catholic nobility and gentry:  in the Lowlands, apparently, almost all were of the new persuasion.  The Duc de Chatelherault might hesitate while his son, the Protestant Earl of Arran, who had been in France as Captain of the Scots Guard, was escaping into Switzerland, and thence to England; but, on Arran’s arrival there, the Hamiltons saw their chance of succeeding to the crown in place of the Catholic Mary.  The Regent had but a small body of professional French soldiers.  But the other side could not keep their feudal levies in the field, and they could not coin the supplies of church plate which must have fallen into their hands, until they had seized the Mint at Edinburgh, so money was scarce with them.  It was plain to Knox and Kirkcaldy of Grange, and it soon became obvious to Maitland of Lethington, who, of course, forsook the Regent, that aid from England must be sought,—­aid in money, and if possible in men and ships.

Meanwhile the reformers dealt with the ecclesiastical buildings of St Andrews as they had done at Perth, Knox urging them on by his sermons.  We may presume that the boys broke the windows and images with a sanctified joy.  A mutilated head of the Redeemer has been found in a latrine of the monastic buildings.  As Commendator, or lay Prior, James Stewart may have secured the golden sheath of the arm-bone of the Apostle, presented by Edward I., and the other precious things,