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