shment--clearly a complete victory for the rioters. This extorted
guarantee was proclaimed at the Cross at nine o'clock on the lingering
July night, in the soft twilight which departs so unwillingly from
northern skies; and a curious scene it must have been, with the
magistrates still cooped up behind the barred windows of the Tolbooth,
the triumph of the mob filling the streets with uproar, and spectators
no doubt at all the windows, story upon story, looking on, glad, can we
doubt? of something to see which was riot without being bloodshed. John
Knox adds an explanation of his conduct in his narrative of the
occurrence, which somewhat softens our feeling towards him. He refused
to ask for the life of the unlucky reveller not without a reason, such
as it was.

"Who did answer that he had so oft solicited in their favour that
his own conscience accused him that they used his labours for no
other end but to be a patron to their impiety. For he had before
made intercession for William Harlow, James Fussell, and others that
were convict of the former tumult. They proudly said 'that if it was
not stayed both he and the Baillies should repent it.' Whereto he
answered 'He would not hurt his conscience for any fear of man.'"

It was not perhaps the fault of Knox or his influence that a man should
be sentenced to be hanged for the rough horseplay of a Robin Hood
performance, or because he was "Lord of Inobedience" or "Abbot of
Unreason," like Adam Woodcock; but the extraordinary exaggeration of a
society which could think such a punishment reasonable is very curious.

Equally curious is the incidental description of how "the Papists"
crowded into Edinburgh after this, apparently swaggering about the
streets, "and began to brag as that they would have defaced the
Protestants." When the Reformers perceived the audacity of their
opponents, they replied by a similar demonstration: "the brethren
assembled together and went in such companies, and that in peaceable
manner, that the Bishops and their bands forsook the causeway." Many a
strange sight must the spectators at the high windows, the old women at
their "stairheads," from which they inspected everything, have seen--the
bishops one day, the ministers another, and John Knox, were it shade or
shine, crossing the High Street with his staff every day to St. Giles's,
and seeing everything, whatever occurred on either side of him, with
those keen eyes.