It is a very striking illustration of the strange confusion of the time, that this discourse was delivered in the parish church, and that immediately after it, and before those who had been stirred by the preacher’s fervid eloquence had retired, a priest came forward, and made preparation for the performance of the very function against which Knox had directed his bitter invectives. This ill-timed zeal, or imprudent defiance, called forth an indignant protest from a youth who was near the altar at the moment. ‘This is intolerable,’ he cried, ‘that when God, by his word, hath plainly damned idolatry, we should stand and see it used in despite.’ The rash priest replied with a violent blow. Rushing out of the church, the young man seized a heavy stone, returned to the altar, and flung the missile with all his might at the aggressor. The stone missed the priest, but struck a statue, and broke it to pieces. This was the signal for a scene of uproar and violence. In a few moments the church was wrecked, and the mob was on its way to the other religious buildings in the city. The tumult lasted for two whole days, during which the monasteries of the Blackfriars, of the Greyfriars, and of the Carthusians were so completely pillaged and destroyed, that ‘the walls only of those great buildings remained.’ Mary of Guise vowed to be avenged; and marched against Perth with a powerful body of troops. But the gentlemen of Fife, Angus, and Mearns, and the burgesses of Dundee were assembling to meet force with force; and though, at first, she affected to despise the rebels, the accession to their number of two thousand five hundred men, under Glencairn, induced her to consent to negotiations. On the 28th of May, a truce was agreed upon. The conditions were that ‘no inhabitants of the town should be troubled for any such crimes as might be alleged against them, for the late change of religion, abolishing of idolatry, and downcasting of the places of the same; and that her Grace would suffer the religion begun to go forward, and leave the town free from the garrisons of the French soldiers.’ On the 29th of May, the ‘Congregation’ departed from Perth; and on the same day, the Queen-Regent, the Duke of Chastelherault, the Earl of Athole, and several prelates, together with d’Oysel and his French troops, entered it. From the very first, it became evident that Mary of Guise had no intention of allowing the conditions of the truce to interfere with her policy. Indeed, she is reported to have said, that she did not consider herself bound to keep her promises to heretics. As for retaining four hundred of d’Oysel’s soldiers as a garrison, she justified that step on the ground that, though in the French service, and in the receipt of French pay, they were Scotsmen.