What the influence of England had not been able to effect, was now produced by antipathy to France. The opinion prevailed that the King of France wished to add Scotland to his territories, and that the Regent gave him aid thereto. When she gathered the feudal array on the borders in 1557 (for the Scots had refused to contribute towards enlisting mercenaries) to invade England according to an understanding with the French, the barons held a consultation on the Tweed, in consequence of which they refused their co-operation for this purpose. The matrimonial crown was indeed even afterwards granted to the Dauphin, when he married Mary Stuart;[196] but thereupon misunderstandings arose with all the more bitterness. Meetings were everywhere held in a spirit hostile to the government. It was this quarrel of the Regent with the great men of the country that gave an opportunity to the lords who were combined for the support of religion to advance with increasing resolution. Among their proposals there is none weightier than that which they laid before her in March 1559, just when the Regent had gathered around her a numerous ecclesiastical assembly. They demanded that the bishops should be elected for the future by the nobility and gentry of each diocese, the parish clergy by the parishioners, and only those were to be elected who were of esteemed life and possessed the requisite capacity: divine service was to be henceforth held in the language of the country. The assembled clergy rejected both demands. They remarked that to set aside the influence of the crown on the elections involved a diminution of its authority which could not be defended, especially during the minority of the sovereign. Only in the customary forms would they allow of any amendments. But this assembly was not content with rejecting the proposals: they confirmed the usages and services stigmatised by their opponents as superstitious, and forbade the celebration of the sacraments in any other form than that sanctioned by the Church. The royal court at Stirling called a number of preachers to its bar for unauthorised assumption of priestly functions. The preachers were ready to come: the lords in whose houses they sojourned were security for them. And already they had the popular sympathy as well as aristocratic protection. It was an old custom of the country that, in especially important judicial proceedings, the accused appeared accompanied by his friends. Now therefore the friends of the Reformation assembled in great numbers at Perth from the Mearns, Dundee, and Angus, that, by jointly avowing the doctrines on account of which their spiritual leaders were called to account, their condemnation might be rendered impossible.