The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Some meat for the dogs . . .

Knox returned to Scotland in 1559, and inaugurated the work of destruction by a violent sermon which he preached at Perth. There and elsewhere churches and monasteries were attacked and sacked. Troops arrived from France to assist the regent in quelling the insurgent Protestants, while in April, Elizabeth, invaded Scotland both by land and sea in support of the Congregation. The desecration and destruction of churches and abbeys went on apace; and in the midst of these scenes of strife and violence occurred the death of the queen regent, in June, 1560. Less than a month later, a treaty of peace was signed at Edinburgh, the King and Queen of Scots (Mary had married in 1558 Francis, Dauphin of France), granting various concession to the Scottish nobles and people. In pursuance of one of the articles of the treaty, the parliament assembled on 1 August, though without any writ of summons from the sovereign. Although the treaty had specially provided that the religious question at issue should be remitted to the king and queen for settlement, assemblage voted for adoption, as the state religion, of the Protestant Confession of Faith; four prelates and five temporal peers alone dissenting. three further statutes respectively abolished papal jurisdiction in Scotland, repealed all former statutes in favour of the Catholic Church, and made it a penal offense, punishable by death on the third conviction, either to say or to hear Mass. All leases of church lands granted by ecclesiastics subsequent to March, 1558, were declared null and void; and thus the destruction of the old religion in Scotland, as far as the hand of man could destroy it, was complete. No time or opportunity was given to the Church to carry out that reform of prevalent abuses which was foreshadowed in the decrees of her latest councils. As in England the greed of a tyrannical king, so in Scotland the cupidity of a mercenary nobility, itching to possess themselves of the Church's accumulated wealth, consummated a work which even Protestant historians have described as one of revolution rather than of reformation.