Thus did the reformed religion advance in Scotland, from small beginnings, and amidst great opposition, until it attained a parliamentary establishment. Besides the influence of heaven secretly accompanying the labours of the preachers and confessors of the truth, the serious and inquisitive reader will trace the wise arrangements of providence in that concatenation of events which contributed to its rise, preservation, and increase,――by overruling the caprice, the ambition, the avarice, and the interested policy of princes and cabinets, many of whom had nothing less in view than to favour that cause, which they were so instrumental in promoting. The breach of Henry VIII. of England with the {332} Roman see, awakened the attention of the inhabitants of the northern part of the island to a controversy which had formerly been carried on at too great a distance to interest them, and led not a few to desire a reformation more improved than the model which that monarch had held out to them. The premature death of James V. of Scotland saved the protestants from destruction. During the short period in which they received the countenance of civil authority, at the commencement of Arran’s administration, the seeds of the reformed doctrine were so widely spread, and took such deep root, as to be able to resist the violent measures which the regent, after his recantation, employed to extirpate them. Those who were driven from the country by persecution found an asylum in England, under the decidedly protestant government of Edward VI. After his death, the alliance of England with Spain, and of Scotland with France, the two great contending powers on the continent, prevented that concert between the two courts which might have proved fatal to the protestant religion in Britain. While the cruelties of the English queen drove protestant preachers into Scotland, the political schemes of the queen regent induced her to favour them, and to connive at the propagation of their opinions. At the critical moment when the latter had accomplished her favourite designs, and was preparing to crush the Reformation, Elizabeth ascended the throne of England, and was induced, by political no less than religious considerations, to support the Scottish reformers. The French court was {333} no less bent on suppressing them, and, having lately concluded peace with Spain, was left at liberty to direct its undivided attention to the accomplishment of that object; but at this critical moment, those intestine dissensions, which continued so long to desolate France, broke out, and forced its ministers to accede to that treaty, which put an end to French influence, and the papal religion, in Scotland. {334} {335} NOTES TO VOLUME FIRST. Note A, Footnote 2.