The proceedings at the Council we learn from the French Ambassador at the English Court. The King did not appear in the Council Chamber, but was in close attendance at the keyhole of the next apartment. 'The Earl of Salisbury took up the subject, and began to reprove him for his obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge the Primacy, and for the verses which he had made in derision of the Royal Chapel. Melville was so severe in his reply both in what related to the King and to the Earl personally, that his lordship was completely put to silence. To his assistance came the Archbishop of Canterbury, then the Earl of Northampton, then the Lord Treasurer; all of whom he rated in such a manner, sparing none of the vices, public or private, with which they are respectively taxed (and none of them are angels), that they would have been glad that he had been in Scotland. In the end, not being able to induce him to swear to the Primacy, and not knowing any other way to revenge themselves on him, they agreed to send him prisoner to the Tower. When the sentence was pronounced, he exclaimed: "To this comes the boasted pride of England! A month ago you put to death a priest, and to-morrow you will do the same to a minister." Then addressing the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Mar, who were in the Council, he said, "I am a Scotchman, my lords, a true Scotchman; and if you are such, take heed that they do not end with you as they have begun with me."'[27] The King was more disconcerted by this parting shot of Melville's than by anything that had happened at the interview. [Footnote 27: _Ambassades de M. de la Boderie_, quoted by M'Crie, p. 271.] On 6th May, Melville's colleagues learned the fate the King had decreed for them. James Melville was commanded to leave London and go into ward at Newcastle-on-Tyne; the other six were to return to Scotland to be confined in districts named in the King's warrant, and they were excluded from any share in the business of the Church courts.