On the 24th of December 1685, Claverhouse returned to Edinburgh in company with the Earl of Perth. The Chancellor had recently abjured Protestantism, and stood in high favour with the King. But if, as Halifax sarcastically remarked, his faith saved him at Court, it made him impossible in Scotland. Within a few weeks of his arrival, on Sunday, the 31st of January, there was a popular demonstration against the avowed and public meetings for the celebration of Mass and other acts of ‘Papish worship.’ The disorderly crowd, in which the apprentices of Edinburgh figured conspicuously, fell upon one of the priests, and compelled him, under threats of death, to renounce popery, and, on bended knees, to take the test oath. Others, as they came from church, were roughly treated and had mud thrown at them. One of the victims of this popular violence was the Chancellor’s wife. The Earl was so incensed at the outrage that he caused some of the boys to be apprehended; and, next day, by order of the Council, one of them was taken to be whipped through the Canongate. But whilst the sentence was being carried out, the apprentices again mustered in large numbers, assaulted the executioner, and rescued their companion. Encouraged by their success, they became so riotous that the soldiers were called out. The crowd was fired upon, and three persons were killed. Next day further punishment was inflicted on the rioters. A woman and two men were flogged through the city; but the authorities had become so apprehensive of violence that the streets were lined with ‘two thick ranks and defiles of musketeers and pikemen.’ Even the military could not be depended upon. A grenadier was remitted to a court-martial for saying he would not fight in the quarrel against the Protestants; and a drummer having been denounced by some Catholics for drawing his sword and declaring that he could find it in his heart to run it through them was summarily shot. Later, a fencing-master was condemned to death and hanged for publicly giving expression to his approval of the tumult. Another man who was brought before the magistrates on a charge of speaking against the Papists, would perhaps have shared the same fate, had it not been proved on his behalf, that he was sometimes mad. The protest of the street was taken up by the pulpit. A fortnight later, ‘Mr Canaires, lately Popish,’ but now minister at Selkirk, preached a violent sermon in the High Church of Edinburgh. In the course of it he gave utterance to the opinion ‘that no man, without renouncing his sense and reason,’ could embrace such doctrines as those of the Pope’s infallibility or of transubstantiation. At the next meeting of the Council, the Chancellor moved that notice should be taken of this seditious language. Fountainhall records that ‘Claverhouse backed the Chancellor in this. But, there being a deep silence in all the rest of the Councillors, it was passed over at this time.’