When the cardinal came out of prison, his eyes had fallen on two men who stood in his way. One of these was the regent, and he had got rid of him by becoming his master. The other was the earl of Lennox, a man formidable by his rank and his pretensions, who had even supposed it possible that he might marry the queen-mother. But Mary of Guise, like all her kindred, was a fanatical devotee of Rome, and at the instance of the cardinal she prayed the King of France to recall Lennox on any specious pretext, adding that his residence in Scotland might lead to a disturbance of peace. Lennox saw that they were trifling with him. He was quite as versatile as Arran but more capable, and seeing that he had lost the favor of France, he offered his services to the King of England, who eagerly accepted them. Lennox was then looked upon as the head of Scottish Protestantism. The two foremost lords of Scotland had performed a feat of what is vulgarly called _chassé-croisée_. The leader of the Protestants had become a papist, and the man of the court of Francis I. had turned Protestant. Instead of the daughter of the Guises, he married Lady Margaret Douglas, a niece of Henry VIII. That is how men of the world manage matters. Evangelical religion had not lost much in losing Arran. Neither had it gained more by acquiring Lennox. These men were only moved by political interests, and Scottish Protestantism more than any other was to reject these shameful combinations of Christ and Baal, and was to have one king alone, Jesus Christ. The cardinal, victorious along the whole line, set himself immediately to the work which he had most at heart,--to crush the Reformation. The law which authorized the reading of Holy Scripture had borne its fruit, and ‘in sundry parts of Scotland,’ says the chronicler, ‘thereby were opened the eyes of the elect of God to see the truth and abhor the papistical abominations.’[310] This abhorrence might possibly drive them to deplorable excesses, an instance of which we are soon to see. There were at Perth, on the left bank of the pleasant river Tay, some friends of the Reformation. Endowed for the most part with genuine piety, they held meetings, read the Holy Scriptures together, searched out their meaning, and gave or listened to the exposition of them.[311]