The queen regent, provoked at these violences, assembled an army, and prepared to chastise the rebels. She had about two thousand French under her command, with a few Scottish troops; and being assisted by such of the nobility as were well affected to her, she pitched her camp within ten miles of Perth. Even the earl of Argyle, and Lord James Stuart, prior of St. Andrew’s, the queen’s natural brother, though deeply engaged with the reformers, attended the regent in this enterprise, either because they blamed the fury of the populace, or hoped by their own influence and authority to mediate some agreement between the parties. The congregation, on the other hand, made preparations for defence; and being joined by the earl of Glencarne from the west, and being countenanced by many of the nobility and gentry, they appeared formidable from their numbers, as well as from the zeal by which they were animated. They sent an address to the regent, where they plainly insinuated, that if they were pursued to extremities by the “cruel beasts” the churchmen, they would have recourse to foreign powers for assistance; and they subscribed themselves her faithful subjects in all things not repugnant to God, assuming, at the same time, the name of the faithful congregation of Christ Jesus.[*] They applied to the nobility attending her, and maintained, that their own past violences were justified by the word of God, which commands the godly to destroy idolatry, and all the monuments of it; and though all civil authority was sacred, yet was there a great difference between the authority and the persons who exercised it;[**] and that it ought to be considered, whether or not those abominations, called by the pestilent Papists religion, and which they defend by fire and sword, be the true religion of Christ Jesus. They remonstrated with such of the queen’s army as had formerly embraced their party, and told them, “that as they were already reputed traitors by God, they should likewise be excommunicated from their society, and from the participation of the sacraments of the church which God by his mighty power had erected among them; whose ministers have the same authority which Christ granted to his apostles in these words, ‘Whose sins ye shall forgive shall be forgiven, and whose sins ye shall retain shall be retained.’”[***] * Knox, p. 129. ** Knox, p. 131. *** Knox, p. 133.