The organisation gave the Protestant leaders boldness, and, through Sir James Sandilands, they petitioned the Regent to permit them to worship publicly according to the Reformed fashion, and to reform the wicked lives of the clergy. This led to the offer of a compromise, which was at once rejected, as it would have compelled the Reformed to reverence the Mass, and to approve of prayers to the saints. The Queen Mother then permitted public worship, save in Leith and Edinburgh. The Lords of the Congregation next demanded a suspension of the laws which gave the clergy power to try and punish heresy, until a General Council, lawfully assembled, should decide upon points then debated in religion; and that all suspected of heresy should have a fair trial before "temporal judges."[301] When the Regent, who gave them "amyable lookis and good wordes in aboundance," refused to allow their petition to come before the Estates, and kept it "close in hir pocket," the Reformers resolved to go to Parliament directly with another petition, in which they declared that since they had not been able to secure a reformation, they had resolved to follow their own consciences in matters of religion; that they would defend themselves and all of their way of thinking if attacked; that if tumults arose in consequence, the blame was with those who refused a just reformation; and that in forwarding this petition they had nothing in view but the reformation of abuses in religion.[302] Knox had been invited by the Earl of Glencairn, the Lords Erskine and Lorn, and James Stewart (afterwards the Earl of Moray), to return to Scotland in 1557.[303] He reached Dieppe in October, and found letters awaiting him which told him that the times were not ripe. The answer he sent spurred the Reforming lords to constitute the _Band_ of December 1557. It was while he was at Dieppe, chafing at the news he had received, that he composed the violent treatise, entitled _The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_[304]--a book which did more to hamper his future than anything else. The state of things was exasperating to a man who longed to be at work in Scotland or England. "Bloody" Mary in England was hounding on her officials to burn Knox's co-religionists, and the Reformation, which had made so much progress under Edward VI., seemed to be entirely overthrown; while Mary of Guise, the Queen Mother and Regent in Scotland, was inciting the unwilling Archbishop of St. Andrews to make use of his legatine and episcopal powers to repress the believers of his native land. But as chance would have it, Mary Tudor was dead before the pamphlet was widely known, and the Queen whom of all others he desired to conciliate was seated on the throne of England, and had made William Cecil, the staunchest of Protestants, her Secretary of State. She could scarcely avoid believing that the _Blast_ was meant for her; and, even if not, it