The Governor remained, and another with him; and, without company, the said Earl, Lord, and Master Henry came to him. After many fair words given unto them all, protesting that he would have them agreed with the Cardinal, and that he would have Master Henry Balnaves the worker and instrument thereof, he drew them forward with him towards Perth, whither the Cardinal had ridden. When it was too late, they began to suspect, and desired to have returned to their folk. But it was answered, "They should send back from the town, but they must needs go forward with my Lord Governor." And so, partly by flattery and partly by force, they were compelled to obey. As soon as ever they were within the town they were apprehended, and upon the morn all three were sent to Black Ness. There they remained so long as it pleased the Cardinal's graceless Grace, and that was until bond of manrent[57] and of service set some of them at liberty. Thus the Cardinal with his craft prevailed on every side; so that the Scots proverb was true in him, "So long runs the fox, as he foot has." [57] Vassalage. [Sidenote: The Persecution at Perth.] We cannot affirm whether it was on this journey, or at another date, that that bloody butcher executed his cruelty upon the innocent persons in Perth. Indeed, we do not study to be curious; we travail to express the actual facts, rather than scrupulously and exactly to record day and date, although we do not omit these when we are certain of them. The truth in regard to the cruel deed at Perth is this. On St. Paul's Day, before the first burning in Edinburgh, the Governor and Cardinal came to Perth, and there, upon envious delation, a great number of honest men and women were called before the Cardinal, and accused of heresy. Albeit they could be convicted of nothing more than suspicion that they had eaten a goose upon Friday, four men were adjudged to be hanged, and a woman to be drowned; and this cruel and most unjust sentence was unmercifully put into execution. The husband was hanged, and the wife, having a sucking babe upon her breast, was drowned. "O Lord, the land is not yet purged from such beastly cruelty; neither has Thy just vengeance yet stricken all that were criminal of their blood. But the day approaches when the punishment of that cruelty and of others will evidently appear."