Unfortunately,
the people of Edinburgh belonged almost entirely to the Reformed
religion; so that, furious at the queen's giving such a proof of
papistry at her first appearance, they entered the church by force,
armed with knives, sticks and stones, with the intention of putting to
death the poor priest, her chaplain. He left the altar, and took refuge
near the queen, while Mary's brother, the Prior of St. Andrews, who
was more inclined from this time forward to be a soldier than an
ecclesiastic, seized a sword, and, placing himself between the people
and the queen, declared that he would kill with his own hand the first
man who should take another step. This firmness, combined with the
queen's imposing and dignified air, checked the zeal of the Reformers.

As we have said, Mary had arrived in the midst of all the heat of the
first religious wars. A zealous Catholic, like all her family on the
maternal side, she inspired the Huguenots with the gravest fears:
besides, a rumour had got about that Mary, instead of landing at Leith,
as she had been obliged by the fog, was to land at Aberdeen. There, it
was said, she would have found the Earl of Huntly, one of the peers who
had remained loyal to the Catholic faith, and who, next to the family
of Hamilton, was, the nearest and most powerful ally of the royal house.
Seconded by him and by twenty thousand soldiers from the north, she
would then have marched upon Edinburgh, and have re-established the
Catholic faith throughout Scotland. Events were not slow to prove that
this accusation was false.

As we have stated, Mary was much attached to the Prior of St. Andrews,
a son of James V and of a noble descendant of the Earls of Mar, who had
been very handsome in her youth, and who, in spite of the well-known
love for her of James V, and the child who had resulted, had none the
less wedded Lord Douglas of Lochleven, by whom she had had two other
sons, the elder named William and the younger George, who were thus
half-brothers of the regent. Now, scarcely had she reascended the throne
than Mary had restored to the Prior of St. Andrews the title of Earl of
Mar, that of his maternal ancestors, and as that of the Earl of Murray
had lapsed since the death of the famous Thomas Randolph, Mary, in her
sisterly friendship for James Stuart, hastened to add, this title to
those which she had already bestowed upon him.

But here difficulties and complications arose; for the new Earl of
Mu