Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/416

402, and stamped under foot. From the cathedral the excited multitude rushed away to the religious houses of the Grey and Black Friars, and thence to the Chapter House, or Carthusian monastery. In a very short time there was not a church or chapel in Perth that was not stripped and desolated; the rioters, Knox says, leaving the spoil to the poor, who showed no reluctance to help themselves. The fury thus aroused against the Popish idolatry, as it was called, soon spread from town to town, and the first to imitate Perth was Cupar in Fife.



The queen-regent, at the news of this destruction, became furious. She vowed she would raze the town of Perth to the ground, and sow it with salt as a sign of eternal desolation. She summoned to her aid Arran, now Duke of Chatelherault, the Earl of Atholl, and D'Oyselles, the French commander, and being joined by two of the Lords of the Congregation, Argyll and the Lord James, who were averse to the outrages committed, on the 18th of May she marched towards Perth. The congregation hastened to address letters both to the queen-regent and the two Lords of the Congregation, who, to their great indignation, had joined her. They told Mary of Guise that hitherto they had served her willingly; but, if she persisted in her persecutions, they should abandon her and defend themselves. They would obey the queen and her husband if permitted to worship in their own way, otherwise they would be subject to no mortal man. To the two Lords of the Congregation they wrote first in mild expostulation, but they soon advanced their tone to threats of excommunication, and the doom of traitors, if they did not come from amongst the persecutors. They addressed another letter "To the generation of Anti-Christ, the pestilent prelates and their shavelings in Scotland;" and they warned them that, if they did not desist from their persecutions, they would exterminate them as the Israelites did the wicked Canaanites.

Matters were proceeding to extremity when Glencairn arrived in the Protestant camp with 2,500 men; this made the queen-regent pause, and an agreement was effected by means of Argyll and the Lord James, by which toleration was again granted, and the queen-regent engaged that no Frenchman should approach within three miles of Perth, a condition which she characteristically evaded by garrisoning it with Scotch troops in French pay. Knox and Willock had an interview with Argyll and the Lord James, and sharply upbraided them with appearing in arms against their