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