While the kirk was beginning to feel the consequences of the king’s emancipation from the Ruthven lords, it sustained an assault, though of a very petty character, from a different quarter. Robert Brown, a Cambridge student, had three years before attracted attention in Norfolk by his novel and startling ideas regarding ecclesiastical matters. The Bishop of Norwich imprisoned him, with the usual non-success as far as the correction of opinion was concerned. He had then taken refuge at Middleburgh, and there given forth his notions to the world in the form of a pamphlet. Now he was come to Scotland, perhaps thinking it a pity that a people should be in trouble between the contending claims of Prelacy and Presbytery, when he could shew them that both systems were wrong. Landing at Dundee, where, it is said, he received some encouragement, he advanced by St Andrews to Edinburgh, and there took up his quarters ‘in the head of the Canongate,’ along with four or five English followers, who were accompanied by their wives and children. The people--who, for the most part, were passionately attached to the simple fabric of their national church, and dreamt of no rivalship or enmity to it except in episcopacy--how they must have felt at the novel sight of a group of men who, in declaring against bishops, also found fault with sessions and synods, with indeed all ecclesiastical action whatever, considering each congregation independent in itself, and no member of it less entitled to pray and preach than the pastor! [Sidenote: 1583-4.]