gain faithful citizens, an attached kirk-session, and John Craig, then
his colleague in the ministry, entreated him to remove for a time to
some place where his life would be safe from violence, and whence he
could return to his loving and beloved flock as soon as the prevailing
faction should be put down, or should vacate the city. But he heard them
all unmoved, until at last they were constrained to tell him plainly
that if he was attacked they had made up their minds to peril their
lives in his defence, and if they were compelled to shed blood in the
contest it must lie on his head. Thus "sore against his will,"[223] as
one of the earliest historians of his declining years tells us, and
"almost thrust out by the authority of the church court,"[224] as
another of them has it, he, on the 5th May 1571, took farewell of
Edinburgh for a time, and crossing the Firth of Forth at Leith moved on
by short and easy stages through Fife to the city in which "God had
first opened his mouth" to proclaim His truth, and for which to the last
he, as well as the Good Regent, cherished a special affection. As Mr
John Davidson, then a teacher in one of the colleges, has expressed it
in homely Scotch:--

"Thou knawis he lude the by the lave,
For _first_ in the he gave the rout
Till Antechrist that Romische slave,
Preicheing that Christ did only save.
Bot _last_ of Edinburgh exprest,
Quhen he was not far fra his grave
He came to the by all the rest."[225]

[Sidenote: His preaching in St Andrews.]

In St Andrews the reformer was sure to be free from personal danger, and
on the whole to have the sympathy of the citizens; though it was not to
be supposed that--in the city and university where the late Archbishop
Hamilton had been long supreme, and had recently been claiming to
exercise the authority of Chancellor of the University, and new founder
of St Mary's College,[226] and where he had left behind several
relations and dependents more compliant with the new order of things
than himself--there were not to be found in this crisis several
influential persons who had more sympathy with their late chief and
with the selfish and crooked policy of the Hamiltons than with the
straightforward course and steadfast fidelity of the dauntless reformer,
and who would have little relish for his earnest warnings and stern
reproofs. The notices preserved to us regarding this last and, so far as
is yet known, longest visit