Some time after, the people discovered their sentiments in such a manner as was sufficient to prognosticate to the priests the fate which was awaiting them. It was usual on the festival of St. Giles, the tutelar saint of Edinburgh, to carry in procession the image of that saint; but the Protestants, in order to prevent the ceremony, found means, on the eve of the festival, to purloin the statue from the church; and they pleased themselves with imagining the surprise and disappointment of his votaries. The clergy, however, framed hastily a new image, which in derision was called by the people young St. Giles; and they carried it through the streets, attended by all the ecclesiastics in the town and neighborhood. The multitude abstained from violence so long as the queen regent continued a spectator; but the moment she retired, they invaded the idol, threw it in the mire, and broke it in pieces. The flight and terror of the priests and friars, who, it was remarked, deserted, in his greatest distress, the object of their worship, was the source of universal mockery and laughter. Encouraged by all these appearances, the congregation proceeded with alacrity in openly soliciting subscriptions to their league; and the death of Mary of England, with the accession of Elizabeth, which happened about this time, contributed to increase their hopes of final success in their undertaking. They ventured to present a petition to the regent, craving a reformation of the church, and of the “wicked, scandalous, and detestable” lives of the prelates and ecclesiastics.[*] They framed a petition which they intended to present to parliament, and in which, after premising that they could not communicate with the damnable idolatry and intolerable abuses of the Papistical church, they desired that the laws against heretics should be executed by the civil magistrate alone, and that the Scripture should be the sole rule in judging of heresy.[**] They even petitioned the convocation, and insisted that prayers should be said in the vulgar tongue, and that bishops should be chosen with the consent of the gentry of the diocese, and priests with the consent of the parishioners.[***] The regent prudently temporized between these parties; and as she aimed at procuring a matrimonial crown for her son-in-law the dauphin, she was, on that as well as other accounts, unwilling to come to extremities with either of them. * Knox, p. 121. ** Knox, p. 123. *** Keith, p. 78, 81, 82.