This was a year of dearth throughout Scotland; wheat being six pounds the boll, oats fifty shillings, a draught-ox twenty merks, and a wedder thirty shillings. ‘All things apperteining to the sustentation of man in triple and more exceeded their accustomed prices.’ Knox, who notes these facts, remarks that the famine was most severe in the north, where the queen had travelled in the preceding autumn: many died there. ‘So did God, according to the threatening of his law, punish the idolatry of our wicked queen, and our ingratitude, that suffered her to defile the land with that abomination again [the mass].... The riotous feasting used in court and country wherever that wicked woman repaired, provoked God to strike the staff of breid, and to give his malediction upon the fruits of the earth.’ It was of the frame of the reformer’s ideas, that a judgment would be sent upon the poor for the errors of their ruler, and that this judgment would be intensified in a particular district merely because the ruler had given it her personal presence. He failed to observe, or threw aside, the fact, that the same famine prevailed in England, where a queen entirely agreeable to him and his friends was now reigning, and certainly indulging in not a few banquetings. Theories of this kind sometimes prove to be two-edged swords, that will strike either way. It might have been replied to him: ‘Accepting your theory that nations, besides suffering from the simple misgovernment of their rulers, are punished for their personal offences, what shall we say of the Protestant Elizabeth, whose people now suffer not merely under famine, as the Scotch are doing, but are visited by a dreadful pestilence besides,[24] from which Scotland is exempt?’ [Sidenote: 1563-4. JAN. 20.] ‘God from heaven, and upon the face of the earth, gave declaration that he was offended at the iniquity that was committed within this realm; for, upon the 20th day of January, there fell weet in great abundance, whilk in the falling freezit so vehemently, that the earth was but ane sheet of ice. The fowls both great and small freezit, and micht not flie: mony died, and some were taken and laid beside the fire, that their feathers might resolve. And in that same month, the sea stood still, as was clearly observed, and neither ebbed nor flowed the space of twenty-four hours.’--_Knox._ [Sidenote: FEB. 15 and 18.] In the ensuing month meteorological signs even more alarming to the great reformer took place. There were seen in the firmament, says he, ‘battles arrayit, spears and other weapons, and as it had been the joining of two armies. Thir things were not only observed, but also spoken and constantly affirmed by men of judgment and credit.’ Nevertheless, he adds, ‘the queen and our court made merry.’