The burgher class having seized the reins of government proceeded to use them in the interests of their kirk. The prime duty of the state was asserted to be the maintenance of the true religion. Ministers were paid by the government. Almost any act of government might be made the subject of interference by the church, for Knox's profession, "with the policy, mind {364} us to meddle no further than it hath religion mixed in it," was obviously an elastic and self-imposed limitation. [Sidenote: Theocracy] The character of the kirk was that of a democratic, puritanical theocracy. The real rulers of it, and through it of the state, were the ministers and elders elected by the people. The democracy of the kirk consisted in the rise of most of these men from the lower ranks of the people; its theocracy in the claim of these men, once established in Moses' seat, to interpret the commands of God. "I see," said Queen Mary, after a conversation with Knox, "that my subjects shall obey you rather than me." "Madam," replied Knox, "my study is that both princes and people shall obey God"--but, of course, the voice of the pulpit was the voice of God. As a contemporary put it: "Knox is king; what he wills obeyit is." Finally the kirk was a tyranny, as a democracy may well be. In life, in manners, in thought, the citizen was obliged, under severe social penalty, to conform exactly to a very narrow standard. [Sidenote: Queen Mary in Scotland, August 19, 1561] When Queen Mary, a widow eighteen years old, landed in Scotland, she must have been aware of the thorny path she was to tread. It is impossible not to pity her, the spoiled darling of the gayest court of Europe, exposed to the bleak skies and bleaker winds of doctrines at Edinburgh. Endowed with high spirit, courage, no little cleverness and much charm, she might have mastered the situation had her character or discretion equaled her intellect and beauty. But, thwarted, nagged and bullied by men whose religion she hated, whose power she feared and whose low birth she despised, she became more and more reckless in the pursuit of pleasure until she was tangled in a network of vice and crime, and delivered helpless into the hands of her enemies. {365} Her true policy, and the one which she began to follow, was marked out for her by circumstances. Scotland was to her but the stepping-stone to the throne of England. As Elizabeth's next heir she might become queen either through the death of the reigning sovereign, or as the head of a Catholic rebellion. At first she prudently decided to wait for the natural course of events, selecting as her secretary of state Maitland, "the Scottish Cecil," a staid politician bent on keeping friends with England. But at last growing impatient, she compromised herself in the Catholic plots and risings of the disaffected southerners.