=6. Reformation Statutes.=--Soon after the conclusion of this treaty, the Regent died. The Estates then approved the _Geneva Confession of Faith_, abjured the authority of the _Pope_, and forbade the saying of the mass, or even assisting at the mass, on pain of forfeiture for the first offence, banishment for the second, death for the third; 25th August, 1560. Thus the old ecclesiastical system, with all its rites and ceremonies, was suddenly overthrown. But this was only in name; in reality it only died out bit by bit. =7. Return of the Queen.=--Just a year after this, the Queen came home, August 1561. She was now a widow, so the Scots were freed from the fear they had felt of seeing their country sink into a province of France. The people, who had an almost superstitious reverence for kingship, which was very inconsistent with their contempt for kingly authority, welcomed her with open arms, and showed their good will by a greater display of discordant and grotesque rejoicing than the austere teachers of the new doctrines could approve. As yet they only saw in her the representative of that long line of Celtic kings whom they chose to look on as their own. She was the "child," for whom they had struggled so long, and had suffered so much from the English. They had yet to find out that she had come back to them French in all but birth, gifted with wit, intellect, and beauty, but subtle beyond their power of searching, and quite as zealous for the old form of religion as they were for the new one. The Queen, too, who came thus as a stranger among her own people, had to deal with a state of things unknown in former reigns. Hitherto the Church had taken the side of the Crown against the nobles; now both were united against the Crown, whose only hope lay in the quarrels between these ill-matched allies. =8. Division of the Church Lands.=--The chief cause of discord between them was the property of the Church. The Reformed ministers fancied that they had succeeded, not only to the Pope's right of dictation in all matters, public and private, but to the lands of the Church as well. To neither of these claims would the Lords agree. They were as little inclined to submit to the tyranny of presbyters as to the tyranny of the Pope. They withstood the ministers who wished to forbid the Queen and her attendants hearing mass in her private chapel, and they refused to accept as law the _First Book of Discipline_, a code of rules drawn up by the ministers for the guidance of the new Church. As to the land, much of it had already passed into the hands of laymen, who, with the lands, generally bore the title of the Church dignitary who had formerly held them. The Privy Council took one-third of what remained to pay the stipends of the ministers, while the rest was supposed to remain in the hands of the Churchmen in possession, and, as they died out, it was to fall in to the Crown.