After the martyrdom of Mill, the protestants renewed their application to the regent, with a warm remonstrance against the cruelty of the clergy. Knox, Historie, p. 122. As the parliament held in November 1558 was approaching, they delivered another petition to her, desiring that it should be laid before the meeting of the estates. In this they requested, that the laws, by which the clergy justified their severe and cruel proceedings against them, should be abrogated, or suspended until the present controversies in religion were regularly determined; or, if this could not be granted, that the clergy should not act as judges, but be obliged to sustain the character of accusers before a temporal judge, and that the same mode of defence should be granted to persons accused of heresy as in other criminal processes. Being persuaded by the promises of the regent to desist from laying this petition before that meeting of parliament, they substituted a protestation; in which they declared that, having waived urging their petitions from regard to the state of public affairs, they should not be liable to any penalties for using that liberty to which they had a just title, and for which they had {444} frequently petitioned, and that, if any tumult was excited by religious differences, or by violent attempts to reform those abuses in religion which were become intolerable, this should not be imputed to them, who had always requested an orderly reformation of these abuses, but to the persons who had resisted every attempt of this kind. Ibid. p. 122‒125. Spotswood, 119, 120. Note FF, Footnote 360.