Shortly after these things, that cruel tyrant and unmerciful hypocrite, falsely called Archbishop of St. Andrews, apprehended that blessed martyr of Christ Jesus, Walter Myln; a man of decrepit age, whom most cruelly and most unjustly he put to death by fire in St. Andrews, the twenty-eighth day of April, the year of God 1558. This did highly offend the hearts of all godly, and immediately after his death a new fervency arose amongst the whole people; yea, even in the town of St. Andrews, the people began plainly to damn such unjust cruelty. In testification that the death of Walter Myln would abide in recent memory, there was cast together a great heap of stones at the place where he was burned. The Archbishop and the priests, offended, caused this to be removed once or twice, with denunciation, by cursing, of any man who should there lay a stone. But their breath was spent in vain; for the heap was always renewed, until the priests and papists did by night steal away the stones to build their walls, and for other their private uses. Having no suspicion that the Queen Regent approved of the murder of Walter Myln, we did most humbly complain of this unjust cruelty, requiring that justice in such cases should be administered with greater indifference.[131] A woman born to dissemble and deceive, she began to lament to us the cruelty of the Archbishop, excusing herself as innocent. She declared that sentence had been given without her knowledge, because the man had been a priest at one time; and the Archbishop's officer had prosecuted him without any commission from the civil authority, _ex officio_, as they term it. [131] Impartiality. [Sidenote: The Protestants appeal to Parliament.] Still unsuspicious, we required some order to be taken against such enormities; and this she promised, as she had often done before. But because a Parliament was to be held shortly after, for certain affairs pertaining rather to the Queen's particular profit than to the commodity of the commonwealth, we thought good to expose our matter unto the whole Parliament, and from them to seek some redress. Therefore, with one consent, we did offer to the Queen and Parliament a letter in this tenor:--