But after this concession was obtained, she received orders from France, probably dictated by the violent spirit of her brothers, to proceed with rigor against the reformers, and to restore the royal authority by some signal act of power.[*] She made the more eminent of the Protestant teachers be cited to appear before the council at Stirling; but when their followers were marching thither in great multitudes, in order to protect and countenance them, she entertained apprehensions of an insurrection, and, it is said, dissipated the people by a promise[**] [2] that nothing should be done to the prejudice of the ministers. Sentence, however, was passed, by which all the ministers were pronounced rebels, on account of their not appearing; a measure which enraged the people, and made them resolve to oppose the regent’s authority by force of arms, and to proceed to extremities against the clergy of the established religion. In this critical time, John Knox arrived from Geneva, where he had passed some years in banishment, and where he had imbibed, from his commerce with Calvin, the highest fanaticism of his sect, augmented by the native ferocity of his own character. He had been invited back to Scotland by the leaders of the reformation; and mounting the pulpit at Perth, during the present ferment of men’s minds, he declaimed with his usual vehemence against the idolatry and other abominations of the church of Rome, and incited his audience to exert their utmost zeal for its subversion. A priest was so imprudent, after this sermon, as to open his repository of images and relics, and prepare himself to say mass. The audience, exalted to a disposition for any furious enterprise, were as much enraged as if the spectacle had not been quite familiar to them: they attacked the priest with fury, broke the images in pieces, tore the pictures, overthrew the altars, scattered about the sacred vases; and left no implement of idolatrous worship, as they termed it, entire or undefaced. They thence proceeded, with additional numbers and augmented rage, to the monasteries of the Gray and Black friars, which they pillaged in an instant: the Carthusians underwent the same fate: and the populace, not content with robbing and expelling the monks, vented their fury on the buildings which had been the receptacles of such abomination; and in a little time nothing but the walls of these edifices were left standing. The inhabitants of Coupar, in Fife, soon after imitated the example.[***] * Melvil’s Memoirs, p. 24. Jebb. vol. ii. p. 446. ** See note B, at the end of the volume. *** Spotswood, p. 121. Knox, p. 127.