Opponents of my view urge that Knox, though he knew that the brethren had nothing to do with the ruin at Perth, yet, in the enthusiasm of six weeks later, claimed this honour for them, when writing to Mrs. Locke. Still later, when cool, he told, in his "History," "the frozen truth," the mob alone was guilty, despite his exhortations and the commandment of the magistrate. Neither alternative is very creditable to the prophet. In the "Historie of the Estate of Scotland," it is "the brethren" who break, burn, and destroy. {113b} In Knox's "History" no mention is made of the threat of death against the priests. In the letter to Mrs. Locke he says, apparently of the threat, perhaps of the whole affair, "which thing did so enrage the venom of the serpent's seed," that she decreed death against man, woman, and child in Perth, after the fashion of Knox's favourite texts in Deuteronomy and Chronicles. This was "beastlie crueltie." The "History" gives the same account of the Regent's threatening "words which might escape her in choler" (of course we have no authority for her speaking them at all), but, in the "History," Knox omits the threat by the brethren of death against the priests--a threat which none of his biographers mentions! If the menace against the priests and the ruin of monasteries were not seditious, what is sedition? But Knox's business, in Book II. of his "History" (much of it written in September-October 1559), is to prove that the movement was _not_ rebellious, was purely religious, and all for "liberty of conscience"--for Protestants. Therefore, in the "History," he disclaims the destruction by the brethren of the monasteries--the mob did that; and he burkes the threat of death to priests: though he told the truth, privately, to Mrs. Locke. Mary did not move at once. The Hamiltons joined her, and she had her French soldiers, perhaps 1500 men. On May 22 "The Faithful Congregation of Christ Jesus in Scotland," but a few gentlemen being concerned, wrote from Perth, which they were fortifying, to the Regent. If she proceeds in her "cruelty," they will take up the sword, and inform all Christian princes, and their Queen in France, that they have revolted solely because of "this cruel, unjust, and most tyrannical murder, intended against towns and multitudes." As if they had not revolted already! Their pretext seems to mean that they do not want to alter the sovereign authority, a quibble which they issued for several months, long after it was obviously false. They also wrote to the nobles, to the French officers in the Regent's service, and to the clergy.