being king of England); this led to complications between Scotland, as
ally of France, and the English on the Borders. Border raids began;
d'Oysel fortified Eyemouth, as a counterpoise to Berwick, war was
declared in November, and the discontented Scots, such as Chatelherault,
Huntly, Cassilis, and Argyll, mutinied and refused to cross Tweed. {74}
Thus arose a breach between the Regent and some of her nobles, who at
last, in 1559, rebelled against her on the ground of religion. While the
weak war languished on, in 1557-58, "the Evangel of Jesus Christ began
wondrously to flourish," says Knox. Other evangelists of his pattern,
Harlaw, Douglas, Willock, and a baker, Methuen (later a victim of the
intolerably cruel "discipline" of the Kirk Triumphant), preached at
Dundee, and Methuen started a reformed Kirk (though not without being
declared rebels at the horn). When these persons preached, their hearers
were apt to raise riots, wreck churches, and destroy works of sacred art.
No Government could for ever wink at such lawless actions, and it was
because the pulpiteers, Methuen, Willock, Douglas, and the rest, were
again "put at," after being often suffered to go free, that the final
crash came, and the Reformation began in the wrack and ruin of
monasteries and churches.

There was drawing on another thunder-cloud. The policy of Mary of Guise
certainly tended to make Scotland a mere province of France, a province
infested by French forces, slender, but ill-paid and predacious. Before
marrying the Dauphin, in April 1558, Mary Stuart, urged it is said by the
Guises, signed away the independence of her country, to which her
husband, by these deeds, was to succeed if she died without issue. Young
as she was, Mary was perfectly able to understand the infamy of the
transaction, and probably was not so careless as to sign the deeds
unread.