The images were stolen from the church; that of St. Giles was carried off by the mob, drowned in the North Loch, and then burned; his arm bone, so precious before, is supposed to have been thrown into the adjacent churchyard; the church was pillaged and the altars and images cast down; the valuables were taken by the authorities and sold, while the proceeds were spent in the repairs of the church. "Irreverence," writes Dr. Lees, "had long been common. It was not to be expected that with the change of religion would come any additional reverence for the things and places which the old religion had proclaimed sacred. We read without much surprise, therefore, of weavers being allowed to set up their looms and exercise their craft 'in ane volt prepared for them in the rufe of Sanct Gellis Kirk,' of the vestry of the church being turned into an office for the town clerk.... It is almost inconceivable that old associations should so thoroughly and quickly have died out."[273] The church suffered from the over-zeal of the early reformers and also from the effects of civil contention when Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange and Queen Mary's adherents retained possession of the castle. Kirkaldy took forcible possession of St. Giles' Church, and placed some of his men in the steeple to keep the citizens in awe. They made "holes in the vaute of the Great Kirk of Edinburgh, which they made like a riddell, to shoot thorough at suche as they pleased within the kirk, or at such as would prease to breake down the pillars."[274]