the hired agents of the "congregation," who had come from Dundee well trained and prepared for every eventuality, cried out "Away with this idolatry." A stone flung at the painting of St. Bartholomew was the signal for a general attack. The followers of Knox rushed to the altar, assailed the priests, tore off their sacred vestments, broke the crucifix to pieces; the altar itself was speedily demolished; and before their fury abated, all the paintings, vestments, sacred utensils, and everything religious throughout the church was destroyed.1 Yet, this was only the commencement of the outbreak. Associates poured in from the surrounding country to aid in the unholy work. In two days all the chapels of Perth were wrecked, the monasteries of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carmelites were plundered and reduced to ruin; even the magnificent Charter-house, the only Carthusian establishment in the kingdom, could not be spared, The mob cried out that "no men of Belial and slaves of Jezabel" should be allowed to remain; rushing on to the noble edifice they burst open the massive gates with a large wooden cross, which they pulled out of the ground near the walls, and in a few hours the monastery was razed to the ground.

Knox, in his "History of the Reformation," does not conceal the atrocities committed in Perth by these sacrilegious plunderers; but he excuses them, and calms his own conscience, by saying that the rich stores of the monasteries presented a strong temptation to the pious burglars. He forgets to add, however, that the monasteries of the religious orders were the store-houses of the poor, and that their supplies were not intended so much for the religious, as for wayfarers, who, whether noble or plebeian, were alike charitably housed and entertained there.

The example of Perth was quickly followed by the Reformers of Cupar Fife, where a Dominican Convent for Nuns, dedicated to St. Catherine of Sienna, with its fine chapel, was ruthlessly ransacked, and reduced to a heap of ruins. On the 9th of June, 1559, Knox, accompanied with "the Lords of the Congregation," and his rascal multitude, as he himself lovingly styled them, went on to Crail, a small seaport only ten miles south of St. Andrew's, which was enriched with a collegiate church. Here the sermon on idolatry was repeated, followed by the same results. The fishermen of Crail soon vied with Knox's followers in the work of pillage and demolition. Altars, images, and holy things, which had for ages been consecrated

Keith's "History, &c.," page 220, and “Sketches from Scenes in Scotland,” by Colonel Murray.

to God, were wantonly smashed, profaned, and pilfered.1 On the morrow, Knox, with his banditti, marched along the Fife coast, westward to the Burgh of Anstruther, which was also adorned with a noble church. The same sentiments were here repeated by the Reformer; and the broken rows of arches long attested how well his work was done.

The Archbishop of St. Andrews, finding that the storm approached, and having only 100 men at his command, fled from the city on the morning of Sunday, the 11th of June. That day Knox marched to the Cathedral of St. Andrew's, and mounting the pulpit, repeated his denunciations against idolatry, and compared his own mission to that of our Divine Lord, whilst whipping the buyers and sellers out of the temple. For three days he kept up, with unabated frantic gesticulation, a series of such inflammatory harangues. The result is easily told"The fine cathedral, the building of which occupied 160 years -the Metropolitan Church of Scotland, in which prelates, nobles, and illustrious individuals were interred-was gutted, and reduced to a melancholy ruin, which may be justly termed Knox's Monument. Not only did the mob spoil the Cathedral Church, but every church in the city, levelling the Priory and the Monasteries of the Black and Grey Friars. Demoniacal possession had become an epidemic."

Alarmed at the scenes of riot which had accompanied such fearful sacrilege, the royal troops were ordered to take the field for the maintenance of public order, and the defence of the lives of peaceful subjects. They marched to Cupar Moor, but there they were met by the army of the "Congregation,' which now numbered three thousand fighting men, and was commanded by Lord James Stuart, the most skilful general in Scotland. The Queen Regent feared to risk a battle, and it was arranged that Commissioners should be appointed to enquire into all matters of dispute between the "Congregation" and the Crown.

In the meantime the fine Abbey of Scone was devoted to destruction. Situated about two miles north of Perth, where

1 See Knox's own letters, ap. M'Crie, page 545, seqq. In a letter of June 23, 1559, he thus describes the manner in which he reformed (this is his phrase) the Abbey of Lindores-" Their altars overthrew we, their idols, vestments of idolatry, and Mass-books we burned in their presence, and commanded them to cast away their monkish habits." Kirkaldy, who was an active agent in the work, wrote on the 1st of July. 1559, to Sir Henry Percy: "The manner of proceeding is this: they pull down all manner of friars' houses, and some abbeys which willingly receive not the reformation; as to parish churches, they cleanse them of images, &c., and command that no Masses be said in them."- -"Scotch MSS., Rolls House, ap. Froude, vii., 116.

2 Gordon's "Scotichronicon," page 307.

Ibid., page 308.

now stands the castle of the Earls of Mansfield, this abbey was one of the most venerable of Scotland, and in it the Scottish Kings had been crowned from very early times. A mob from Dundee now vowed its destruction; they first plundered and sacked it; fire was then applied to the ruin, and thus amidst the frantic shouts and exultations of the first Presbyterian Elders, this historic abbey was completely destroyed, No wonder that even Knox should deem it necessary to apologise for this lawless outrage: "Neither the principal lords and gentlemen," he says, "nor even I myself, was able to stop that religious, or rather irreligious fury."

So far, however, were the "Lords of the Congregation" and Knox from seeking to allay the irreligious fury which they had so wantonly kindled, that the very day after the burning of Scone, two of the leading members of the Congregation porceeded with some followers to Stirling, to stir up the populace there to pull down its religious houses. This old burgh had some noble churches and monasteries of considerable wealth and importance. The citizens guarded the Franciscan Church, and it alone was saved. All the other churches and monasteries,1 with the altars, paintings, statues, and sacred ornaments, were, in the language of the times, swept with the besom of destruction. About a mile from Stirling was the magnificent Royal Abbey of Cambuskenneth, beautifully situated on the north bank of the Forth. In the course of one day the whole was dismantled and reduced to a mass of ruins, except the great tower, which is still to be seen in solitary grandeur—an imposing monument amid the gorgeous surrounding scenery,2 2 The only article the irreligious bandits were anxious to preserve was the bell of the abbey. They placed it in a boat, intending to convey it to Stirling, there to turn it to their private advantage, but its weight sank the boat, and the ancient bell of Cambuskenneth Abbey still rests in the bed of the Forth.

After three days abode at Stirling, the Presbyterian mob set forward towards the capital, "for reformation to be made there likewise," as Knox himself assures us. Half way they halted at Linlithgow, to renew their deeds of robbery and vandalism. The Queen fled in terror from Edinburgh, and the mob, anticipating the arrival of Knox, sacked all the monas teries within the city. Knox says, "We arrived the 29th of June," but such devastation had been made, that “ the less troubled in putting order to such places." A cotemporary record assures us that Edinburgh presented one

we were

1 Froude (vii., 116,) adds that "the Abbeys (at Stirling), even to the very gardens, were destroyed in the presence, and by the order of Argyle and Lord James,' 2 Gordon's " Scotichronicon," page 310,

vast scene of riot and plunder-" All Kirkmen's goods and gear were spulyeit and reft fra them in every place where the samyn culd be apprehendit; for every man, for the maist pairt, that culd get any thing pertenying to any Kirkmen, thocht the same as weel won gear. "Even the Chapel Royal had to share in the common ruin. Its paintings and costly ornaments were torn away, and cast into the fire; whilst its superb altar vessels were seized on for the private family use of the Presbyterian Elders.

Such were the first scenes enacted in the name of Presbyterian Reformation in Scotland. They rivalled and surpassed the irreligious deeds of the English Reformers; and the Protestant Bishop Keith acknowledges that "the wounds thus given to the civil, as well as ecclesiastical authority, are rather a scandal than an ornament both to our reformation and its authors."

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One who a few years later was driven from Scotland by the same storm, has vividly described the use to which the plundered monasteries were now converted. "Truly (thus writes Father Alexander Baillie in 1628), among all their deeds and devices, the casting down of the churches was the most foolish and furious work, the most shrewd and execrable turn that even Hornok himself could have done or devised. For, beyond all doubt, that great grandfather of Calvin, and old enemy of mankind, not only inspired every one of those sacrilegious hell-hounds with his flaming spirit of malice and blasphemy as he did their forefathers, Luther and Calvin, but also was then present, as master of work, busily beholding his servants and hirelings, working his will, and bringing to pass his longdesired contentment. They changed the churches, which God himself called His house of prayer, into filthy and abominable houses of sensual men, yea, and of irrational beasts; as, for instance, they made stables in Holyrood house, sheep-houses of St. Anthony's and St. Leonard's chapels, tollbooths of St. Giles', &c., which this day may be seen to the great grief and sorrow of all good Christians, to the shame and confusion of Edinburgh, and to the everlasting damnation of the doers thereof, the seditious ministers, Knox and his accomplices.3 1 "Diurnal of Occurrents," page 269.

246

History of Church and State in Scotland," Vol. I., page 250.

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The decay of the Churches in England was not less striking: Systematic irreverance had intruded into the churches; carelessness and irreligion had formed an unnatural alliance with Puritanism. The parish churches themselves, those amazing monuments of early piety, built by men who themselves lived in clay hovels, while they lavished their taste, their labour, and their wealth on the House of God, were still dissolving into ruin. The roofs were breaking into holes; the stained whitewash was crumbling off the damp walls, revealing the half-effaced remains of the frescoed stories of the saints; the painted glass was gone from the windows; the wind and the rain swept through the dreary aisles; while in the churchyards swine rooted up the graves."-Froude, vol. viii., page 92.

What would our Saviour say, if He were now entering in at St. Giles', and looking to bare walls and pillars clad with dust sweepings and cobwebs, instead of paintings and tapestry? and on every side beholding the restless resorting of people, treating of worldly affairs, some writing and making obligations, contracts, and discharges, others laying counts or telling over sums of money, and two and two walking and talking to and fro, some about merchandize and the laws, and too many, alas, about drinking, yea, and perhaps worse than I can imagine. And turning him farther towards the west end of the Church, which is divided in a high house for the College of Justice, called the Session or Senate House, and a lower house, called the Low Tollbooth, where the bailies of the town sit and judge common actions and pleas in the one end thereof, and a number of criminals enclosed in the other. And these, I mean, if our Saviour were present to behold such abominable desolation, that where altars were erected, and sacrifices, with continual prayers and praises were wont to be offered up to the Lord, in remembrance of that bloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, there now nothing is heard but banning and swearing, and every one upbraiding another. Oh, what grief and sorrow would our Lord take at the beholding of such profanation and sacrilege."1

What little remained untouched by the first Fathers of the Kirk was sure to meet its fate from the spirit of pillage and demolition which was perpetuated in their children. "To make a dyke or fill a drain, or to erect a staring abomination of a new mansion-house, the grey ancestral tower was triumphantly blown down with gunpowder. The mean barn was supplied with its lintels and corner stones from the mouldings of the little chapel where their forefathers worshipped. It is but fifty years since an Edinburgh architect, employed to repair the nave of the Cathedral at Brechin, still used as a Parish Kirk, begged earnestly for leave to remove that useless old tower which darkened a window. This was the Round Tower of Brechin, of mysterious antiquity-the connecting link of Irish and Scotch History."2

With the monasteries of Scotland were destroyed the noble libraries, and the collection of manuscripts gathered with so much industry, and so long faithfully guarded in these asylums of science, as of religion. Much has been written of the sad use to which most precious MSS. were devoted by these worse than vandal innovators. Bale, Protestant Bishop of Ossory,

1 66 True Information," &c., by Rev. A. Baillie, Wurtzburg, 1628. Quarterly Review," No. 89, page 44. Scotichronicon," page 313.

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