led by Andrew Melville, feared not to arraign that monarch
who once told his bishops that "now he had put the sword into their
hands they should not let it rust." They tabled petitions, published
protests, obtained interviews, but all proved powerless to arrest the
career of those who were bent on the annihilation of the Church, and the
establishment on its ruins of the royal Supremacy. In one of their
protests, they call upon the Estates to "advance the building of the
house of God, remembering always that there is no absolute and undoubted
authority in the world excepting the sovereign authority of Christ the
King, to whom it belongeth as properly to rule the Kirk according to the
good pleasure of His own will, as it belongeth to Him to save the Kirk
by the merit of His own sufferings." The attempt to impose Laud's
liturgy gave opportunity for an outburst of the slumbering flame of
discontent. Janet Geddes flung a stool at the head of the officiating
Dean, and the tumult that ensued extended far and wide. A tablet,
recently erected to her memory in St. Giles, states that "she struck the
first blow in the great struggle for freedom of conscience." The
proclamation by the Council of the State, condemning all meetings
against the Episcopal Canons and Service Book, brought the Reformers
accessions from all parts of the kingdom. Could an oppressed people bear
the tyranny longer? But, will they take up arms and scatter carnage and
blood throughout the land? No, their weapons will not be carnal, but
mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. They will go to
the Covenant God of the kingdom, and they will stand before Him, saying,
"Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse." Scotland will
renew her covenant with God.

The National Covenant of 1580 was produced. An addition was made, in two
parts. The part summarizing the Acts of Parliament, condemning the
papacy and ratifying the confessions of the Church, was drafted by
Warriston; that with special religious articles for the time was by
Henderson. The spot chosen for the solemnities of the first subscription
was the Churchyard of Greyfriars, Edinburgh. "The selection," writes the
historiographer-royal for Scotland, "showed a sound taste for the
picturesque. The graveyard in which their ancestors have been laid from
time immemorial stirs the hearts of men. The old Gothic Church of the
Friary was then existing; and landscape art in Edinburgh has by rep