‘The magistrates of [Glasgow], by the earnest dealing of Mr Andrew Melville and other ministers, had condescended to demolish the cathedral, and build with the materials thereof some little churches in other parts, for the ease of the citizens. Divers reasons were given for it--such as, the resort of superstitious people to do their devotion in that place; the huge vastness of the church, and that the voice of a preacher could not be heard by the multitudes that convened to sermon; the more commodious service of the people; and the removing of that idolatrous monument (so they called it) which was of all the cathedrals in the country only left unruined, and in a possibility to be repaired. To do this work, a number of quarriers, masons, and other workmen, was conduced, and the day assigned when it should take beginning. Intimation being made thereof, and the workmen by sound of a drum warned to go unto their work, the crafts of the city in a tumult took arms, swearing with many oaths, that he who did cast down the first stone should be buried under it. Neither could they be pacified till the workmen were discharged by the magistrates. A complaint was hereupon made, and the principals cited before the council for insurrection: where the king, not as then thirteen years of age, taking the protection of the crafts, did allow [sanction] the opposition they had made, and inhibited the ministers (for they were the complainers) to meddle any more in that business, saying, “That too many churches had already been destroyed, and that he would not tolerate more abuses in that kind.”‘--_Spot._ * * * * * [Sidenote: APR.] John Stewart, Earl of Athole, was one of the more respectable of the Scottish nobility of this age. To Queen Mary--whom he had entertained at a hunt in Glen Tilt in 1564--he proved a faithful friend,[103] till her fatal marriage with Bothwell, when, although a Catholic, he joined those who crowned her son as king. During the regencies, he lived in dignified retirement, till called upon to make an effort to rescue the young king from the thraldom in which he was held by Morton. A temporary fall of Morton in 1577 left Athole chancellor of the kingdom. [Sidenote: 1579.]