it was to appear to her in all its wildness.

After having passed one night at Holyrood Palace, "during which," says
Brantome, "five to six hundred rascals from the town, instead of letting
her sleep, came to give her a wild morning greeting on wretched fiddles
and little rebecks," she expressed a wish to hear mass. Unfortunately,
the people of Edinburgh belonged almost entirely to the Reformed
religion; so that, furious at the queen's giving such a proof of papistry
at her first appearance, they entered the church by force, armed with
knives, sticks and stones, with the intention of putting to death the
poor priest, her chaplain. He left the altar, and took refuge near the
queen, while Mary's brother, the Prior of St. Andrews, who was more
inclined from this time forward to be a soldier than an ecclesiastic,
seized a sword, and, placing himself between the people and the queen,
declared that he would kill with his own hand the first man who should
take another step. This firmness, combined with the queen's imposing and
dignified air, checked the zeal of the Reformers.

As we have said, Mary had arrived in the midst of all the heat of the
first religious wars. A zealous Catholic, like all her family on the
maternal side, she inspired the Huguenots with the gravest fears:
besides, a rumour had got about that Mary, instead of landing at Leith,
as she had been obliged by the fog, was to land at Aberdeen. There, it
was said, she would have found the Earl of Huntly, one of the peers who
had remained loyal to the Catholic faith, and who, next to the family of
Hamilton, was, the nearest and most powerful ally of the royal house.
Seconded by him and by twenty thousand soldiers from the north, she would
then have marched upon Edinburgh, and have re-established the Catholic
faith throughout Scotland. Events were not slow to prove that this
accusation was false.