complicity in the murder of the Regent. After Kirkcaldy and his men had returned from their nocturnal expedition, ‘nine great cannons were discharged’ from the ramparts, ‘to give the Regent who was then in the town, a defiance in his face.’ Fortunately, however, for the guns were shotted, ‘no harm was done, but that John Wallace’s house was shot through, and a barn in the Cannongate.’ John Knox was in Edinburgh at the time; and raised his powerful voice in condemnation of ‘so slanderous, so malapert, so fearful, and so tyrannous a deed. For,’ said he, ‘if the committer had been a man without God, a throat-cutter, one that had never known the works of God, it would have moved me no more than other riots and enormities which my eyes have seen the Prince of this world, Satan, to raise by his instruments. But to see the stars fall from heaven, and a man of knowledge commit so manifest treason, what godly heart cannot lament, tremble, and fear? God be merciful! for the example is terrible, and we have all need earnestly to call to God, that we be not led into temptation; but specially to deliver us from the company of the wicked; for, within these few years, men would have looked for other fruits than have budded out of that man.’ As soon as the Reformer’s rebuke was communicated to him, Kirkcaldy replied to it in a letter which he addressed to Craig, the minister of the church, to whom it was delivered as he was in his pulpit. It ran as follows: ‘This day John Knox, in his sermon, called me, openly, a murderer and a throat-cutter, wherein he hath spoken farther than he is able to justify. For I take God to witness, if it was my mind that the man’s blood should have been shed, of whom he calleth me the murderer. And the same God I desire, from the bottom of my heart, to pour out his vengeance suddenly upon him or me, which of us two hath been most desirous of innocent blood. This I desire you, in God’s name, to declare openly to the public. At Edinburgh Castle, the 24th of December 1570.’ Craig, however, refused to comply with the request contained in the latter part of the letter, stating that he would read nothing from the pulpit without the knowledge and consent of the Kirk. In another letter, which he wrote to the Kirk Session of Edinburgh, Kirkcaldy gave his version of what had happened, throwing all the blame on the Duries, and protesting his innocence of any intention to cause the death of Seton.