It would have gone ill with this “solid, weel-jointed mason-wark” when the leaven of the Reformation was working, had not the Glaswegians, prouder of the building than of the religion for which it stood, presented a bold front against the fury of the surrounding townships and their own suburbs, eager to destroy it altogether. Again, in the words of Andrew Fairservice, “It wasna for love o’ paperie—na, na! nane could ever say that o’ the trades o’ Glasgow. Sae they sune came to an agreement to take a’ the idolatrous statues o’ sants (sorrow be on them) out o’ their neuks. And sae the bits o’ stane idols were broken in pieces by Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molendinar Burn, and the auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the fleas are kaimed off her, and a’body was alike pleased.” [Sidenote: _CROMWELL_] The Cathedral was then made to fulfil the needs of no fewer than three congregations: one meeting in the choir, another in the nave, and a third in the Laigh Kirk, or Low Church (_i.e._ the crypt). The ancient pile has not been without its dramatic moments, as when, in October 1650, Cromwell himself sat here, unmoved, with Mr. Secretary Thurlow, while a furious preacher, Dr. Zachary Boyd, emulating a like exploit of John Knox before Queen Mary, many years before, for two hours preached at him, as “Sectary and Blasphemer.” “Shall I have him out by the ears and pistol him?” whispered Thurlow, his anger gaining the better of his lawyer instincts. “No,” replied the man of force and arms, unwontedly, but roughly, diplomatic. “He’s a fool and you’re another: I’ll pay him out in his own coin.” He invited Boyd to dinner, and after the meal offered up an exhausting prayer of three hours’ length. After this “like cures like” homœopathic treatment, Dr. Boyd crept home, dazed, to bed and nightmare: but it would surely have been more prettily exasperating had Cromwell prayed his three hours _before_ dinner.